f-LlCRARY OF CONGRESS.?! 



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MOSES RIGHT, 



BISHOP COLENSO WRONG; 



BEING 






THE EEY. JOHE" CUMMIl^G, D.D., 

B". I^. S. El. 



NEW-YORK: 

JOHN BRADBURN, PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER, 

(Successor to M. Dooladt,) 

No. -4,9 ^Walker Street. 

1863. 



Il^TEODUOTION. 



Numbers who have heard these Lectures have requested 
the author to print them in a cheap form for extensive cir- 
culation. There is a " needs-be." Men of skeptical and 
irreligious opinions are busy commenting with delight on 
the untenable criticisms of Bishop Colenso, and young per- 
sons especially ignorant of the facts of the subject in dis- 
cussion are apt to be misled and deceived. These lectures 
will prove how unreliable the Bishop's statements are, and 
how strong and impregnable are the truths and facts re- 
corded in Holy "VYrit; they may, too, by God's blessing, 
prove of use to such as desire to have their doubts and 
difficulties, especially on the historical events of the Pen- 
tateuch, removed and dissolved. There are various learned 
and scholarly replies. But these do not meet the cases 
to which these Lectures are addressed. 



MOSES EIGHT, 

AND 

BISHOP OOLE]^SO WEOK'Q. 



CHAPTER I. 

WHITHER THE BISHOP's BARK CARRIES HIM. 

I STATED incidentally in some recent remarks that 
I would endeavor to direct attention to the demerits 
of a book far more popular than it deserves to be from 
its intrinsic character, and far more extensively read 
than a Christian mind could desire, especially by those 
borderers between truth and error who are incompe- 
tent to dispose of its fallacies. I allude to the work 
upon the " Pentateuch," by Bishop Colenso. Suppose 
that work had been written by a presbyter of the Scot- 
tish Church, I should equally have animadverted* on it. 
It is not because the author is a bishop that I take any 
pleasure in noticing it ; nor is it with words of invec- 
tive, or in ill-will, or sectarian exclusiveness that I cri- 
ticise it. It is because the work is doing considerable 
mischief, as written by a bishop — not, however, among 
Christians, for this is improbable ; but, as I have said, 
in that class of the community whicli is still hovering 
between the truths of the Gospel and the fillacies, 



6 WHITHER THE BISHOP's 

plausible fallacies, that profess to disprove or under- 
mine thera. On the minds of these, the specious objec- 
tions, earnestly urged by Bishop Colenso, must have 
some effect. Now, it is the duty of every faithful min- 
ister of Christ not only to feed the flock, which I hum 
bly try to do, but also to beat off the wolf, which 1 
will try to do also. I therefore address myself to the 
discussion of a theme on which I am persuaded, on the 
most irrefragable grounds, that the Bishop is wofully 
deceived ; while from all he urges I gather the convic- 
tion, that no stone or Aveapon can be thrown against 
the foundation of God's inspired Word which can ever 
injure it. 

If the Bishop merely differed from me on some de- 
nominational or ecclesiastical questions, I would never 
think of answering him ; or if it were a question that 
related to the Church of England alone, I would leave 
it for the good bishops and the faithful ministers that 
officiate by its altars, to dispose of it. But what he 
impugns is the heritage and glory of the Church uni- 
versal. If this Bishop be right, our preaching is vain ; 
our teaching is unnecessary ; you have followed cun- 
ningly-devised fables, and I have taught — for many 
years — not the words of soberness and truth, but of 
error, absurdity, and delusion. 

In this lecture I will not enter upon the varied 
minute and specific arithmetical objections which he 
adduces ; these I will reserve to other chapters. I will 
show in this, and I think with irresistible logical force, 



BABK CARRIES HIM. 7 

that if the Bishop's objections be true — if they can be 
sustained by fair and proper evidence, such as a jury 
of Englishmen could listen to — there is not a book in 
the Bible that is reliable ; there is scarcely' a writer in 
the Bible Avho is not either a fool or a false witness ; 
and there is barely a fragment left of the inspired rec- 
ords that is wortli being treasured up in the hearts, the 
consciences, and the intellects of Christendom, as a 
communication from God. 

Let me present, first of all, the conclusion at which 
he has arrived. I will read his own words, from the 
preface to his book, at page 17. The title of the book 
— which I do not wish you to read, unless you have 
the antidote along with the bane — is, " The Pentateuch 
and Book of Joshua Critically Examined, by the Right 
Rev. John William Colenso, D.D., Bishop of Natal." 
He records, in page 17, what his conclusion is: — "I 
became so convinced of the unhistorical character of 
very considerable portions of the Mosaic narrative, that 
I decided not to forward my letter at all ;" but, after 
reconsidering the whole subject, he states the chief 
result of his examination : — " But the main result of 
my examination of the Pentateuch," that is, the Book 
of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy 
— Pentateuch meaning five works, and being the name 
commonly applied to the Mosaic records — " The main 
result of my examination of the Pentateuch, — viz., that 
the narrative, whatever may be its value and meaning, 
can not be regarded as historically true — is not, unless I 



8 WHITHER THE BISHOP'S 

greatly deceive myself, a doubtful matter of specula- 
tion at all ; it is a simple question of facts." And 
after he has so said, he adds a foot-note, in which he 
thus exjDlains himself: — "I use the expression ' unhis- 
torical,' or ' not historically true,' throughout, rather 
than ' fictitious,' since the word ' fiction ' is frequently 
understood to imply a conscious dishonesty on the part 
of the writer, or an intention to deceiA'C." I wish to 
give him all credit for this. He does not mean that 
Moses was a dishonest and untruthful man, who wrote 
a book pm-posely to deceive and to mislead ; Moses 
was not nearly so bad as that ; but he was so ignorant 
— if it was Moses that wrote the Pentateuch — and so 
incompetent a witness, and so unreliable an annalist — 
if, after all, he was a living person and not a myth — 
that what he has written is of no more historical value, 
as a record of facts, than one of Walter Scott's novels, 
or any clever and plausible book of fiction. I have 
stated, without the least exaggeration, what seems to 
me substantially the conclusion of Bishop Colenso. 

" If we compare," he says, " one passage with an- 
other, we shall find them to contain a series of man- 
ifest contradictions and inconsistencies, which leave us, 
it would seem, no alternative but to conclude that main 
portions of the story of the Exodus, though based pro- 
bably upon some real historical foimdation, yet are 
certainly not to be regarded as historically true ; that, 
as a whole, it could never in its present form have been 
written by Moses, or by any one who had actually taken 



BARK CARRIES HIM. 9 

part in the scenes which it professes to describe." He 
thus concludes that the statements of the Pentateuch 
are not historically true. But what does this imply ? 
If I were to tell you that "Alison's History of Europe" 
is not historically true, and if I proved my charge, what 
would Alison's work be ? A myth, a beautiful ro- 
mance, and nothing more. If I were to prove to you 
that " Hume's History of England " is not historically 
true, it would mean that it is a mere creation of the 
fancy of Hume, and not a literal history of facts. 
Either the work is historically true, or it is a romance 
poetically beautiful, but not a record and authentic 
statement of events. In fact he says, these books 
which profess to be histories, and to record facts, do 
not state facts ; that the writer, whoever he was, knew 
nothing about them ; that in all probability Moses 
could not be the writer, for he says he writes a chap- 
ter at the end of Deuteronomy giving an account of 
his own death ; and that therefore some bigoted annal- 
ist, some romancist among the Jews, some Waltei 
Scott in Israel, must have written these records out of 
his own heated brain, or from old traditions ; and that 
the history of Creation, the Fall, Redemption, the 
Flood, Abraham, IsToah, all is false, or historically un- 
true ; a splendid romance, but not matter-of-fact. 

Now then, having seen these conclusions, I wish to 
add what the Bishop himself says is the result of all. 
" What the end may be God only knows ; the God of 
truth only can foresee. Meanwhile, and believing and 



10 WHITHER THE BISHOP'S 

trusting in his guidance, I have committed my bark to 
the flood, and am carried along by its waters." Now, 
I have no doubt the Bishop is perfectly sincere. I 
think he is indiscreet and rash, but not insincere. He 
is indeed singularly rash and hasty. Instead of giving 
conclusions which he says he reached only about eight- 
een months ago, he ought to have taken the classic ad- 
vice which he will find in a Latin poet well known to 
him, no doubt, and have carefully and seriously pon- 
dered and weighed them for nine years ; and after hav- 
ing done so, as became so grave a subject, he might 
have published the result of his discovery ; but having 
published it, I give him credit for his statement, that 
he feels deep pain, because he believes he has thus lift- 
ed the anchors of Christendom, and left all afloat upon 
waters carrying them they not whither, — without a 
chart, without a compass, and, I fear we must add, 
without a hope. 

All I will attempt in this lecture will be to show you 
that if Bishop Colenso's position be true, namely, that 
Moses was not the writer of the Pentateuch, and that 
what is written in the Pentateuch is not actual, literal, 
hon^ fide historical fact, most of the Old Testament, 
and nearly all the ISTew Testament, must therefore be 
equally untrue. I will show that the Bishop, in his 
own words, having committed his bark to the flood, is 
carried along upon waters which are wafting him to 
shores that he never anticipated. He says the Penta- 
teuch is historically false ; Moses is probably not the 



BAEK CARRIES HIM. H 

writer. But what logically follows ? First of all, that 
David, the sweet singer of Israel, was totally misin- 
formed, and has stated what is not true ; for David 
says (Psalm ciii. 7) , " God made known his ways unto 
Moses:" — (Psalm evi. 16), "They envied Moses also 
in the camp:" — (Psalni cvi. 23), "Moses stood before 
him in the breach." What would an ordinary reader 
infer from these words ? — that David regarded Moses 
as a living person, and that he regarded as facts, his- 
toric facts, what he quotes and attributes to Moses. 
But if Bishop Colenso be correct, David — instead of 
being an inspired penman — was a misinformed rhapso- 
dist ; either he was deceived, or he deceives. The 
Bishop also sweeps away Isaiah ; for what does this 
prophet say ? — (Isaiah Ixiii. 12), " God led them by the 
right hand of Moses." He states the fact recorded in 
Exodus, and repeats it in his own pages, therefore Isa- 
iah was deceived or a deceiver. Jeremiah ( xv. 1), 
who writes, " Though Moses and Samuel stood before 
me ;" regarding these two as great prophets, also was 
misinformed. Malachi (iv. 4) says, " Remember ye the 
law of Moses my servant," — he also was misled. And 
Peter was totally deceived at Pentecost ; for what does 
he say ? (Acts iii. 22) " Moses truly said unto the 
fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up 
unto you of your brethren, like unto me ; him shall ye 
hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you." 
Where did Peter get these words ? From the Penta- 
teuch. But evidently Peter was mistaken and deluded, 



12 WHITHER THE BISHOP'S 

and identified a human fiction with a Divine fact, and 
IDrobably, therefore, was as much a myth as the writer 
of the Pentateuch. And not only so, but the proto- 
martyr Stephen was also utterly deceived on the eve of 
martyrdom. He said, " Men, brethren, and fathers, 
hearken. The God of glory appeared unto our father 
Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he 
dwelt in Charran, and said unto him, Get thee out of 
thy country, and come into the land which I shall show 
thee." But Abraham is one of the myths of Moses, a 
fanciful personage, the mere meteor of a troubled fancy. 
Yet Stephen, the proto-martyr, who spake by the Spirit 
of God, supposed Abraham to be a living man, and not 
a mythic person. He proceeds, in this chapter (vii.) of 
the Acts of the Apostles, " The patriarchs, moved with 
envy, sold Joseph into Egypt ;" that looks like his view- 
ing it as a historic fact. " And when Jacob heard that 
there was corn in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first ;" 
that also seems historic fact. And then he says again, 
" So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and 
our fathers." And then, in verse 22, " And Moses was 
learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was 
mighty in words and in deeds. And when he was full 
forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his breth- 
ren the children of Israel. And seeing one of them 
suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that 
was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian ;" that is stated 
as historic fact. In this chapter, you will find the lead- 
ing facts of the Pentateuch in brief. Then, what fol- 



BARK CAimiES HIM. 13 

loA\^s ? If Moses was not a real person, or if Moses was 
not the writer of the Pentateuch, or if the Pentateucli 
be not historically true, Stephen, the great proto-mar- 
tyr, speaking by the Spirit of God, on the eve of his 
martyrdom and death, was so deceived and mistaken, 
that he quoted as facts, airy fables, and alluded to per- 
sons Avho, as Bishop Colenso knows better than Ste- 
phen, never had an historic existence at all. 

I go farther still ; for it will be seen that the Bishop's 
logic sweeps away every thing that we trust in. I turn 
to the Apostle Paul. If Moses was not an actual per- 
son, if he was not the writer of the Pentateuch, if the 
Pentateuch be not historically true, what mean the 
words of Paul in Acts xxvi. 22 ? "I continue unto this 
day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none 
other things than those which the prophets and Moses 
did say should come." And 1 Cor. x. 2, " They were 
all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea." 
And in 2 Cor. iii. 7, " The children of Israel could not 
steadfastly behold the face of Moses." And what is 
still more striking, that roll call, as it has been named, 
of the illustrious dead — the cloud of witnesses — con- 
tained in the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the He- 
brews, shows while I read it how thoroughly the Apos- 
tle Paul was deceived if Bishop Colenso be specially 
taught. He says in the fourth verse, '' By faith Abel 
offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." 
What a pity that Paul Avas not as enlightened as Co- 
lenso ! He never would then have alluded to two myths 



14 WHITHER THE BISHOP'S 

as living, historic persons. Again, "By faith Enoch 
was translated that he should not see death." This 
looks like the Apostle Paul believing this to be fact. 
" By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not 
seen as yet, moved Avith fear, prepared an ark to the 
saving of his house ; by the which he condemned the 
world, and became heir of the righteousness which is 
by faith." " By faith Abraham, when he was called to 
go out into a place which he should after receive for an 
inheritance, obeyed." And again, " By faith Abraham, 
when he was tried, offered up Isaac." And again, " By 
faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months 
of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child ; 
and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. 
By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to 
be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rath- 
er to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to 
enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season ; esteeming the 
reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in 
Egypt ; for he had respect unto the recompense of the 
reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the 
wrath of the king ; for he endured as seeing Him who 
is invisible. Through faith he kept the passover, and 
the sprinkling of blood, lest He that destroyed the first- 
born should touch them. By faith they passed through 
the Red Sea as by dry land ; which the Egyptians as- 
saying to do, were drowned. By faith the walls of 
Jericho fell down after they were compassed about seven 
days. By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with 



BARK CARRIES HIM. 15 

them that believed not, when she had received the spies 
with peace. And what shall I say more ? for the time 
would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of 
Samson, and of Jephtha, of David also, and Samuel, 
and of the prophets." Now, what would you infer 
from this chapter written by the Apostle Paul ? That 
all he records he believed to be actual, that living and 
historic persons engaged in the very work ascribed to 
them in the Pentateuch, and that, instead of being 
myths, and dreams, and romantic representations of 
things that never were, they were living actors in the 
world's great drama, and the acts ascribed to them in 
the Pentateuch the Apostle Paul accepts and reasserts 
as having actually and historically occurred. 

Jude also must have been deceived, for he says that 
Satan disputed about the body of Moses ; and St. John 
in the Apocalypse plainly must have been misled, for 
he says the redeemed in heaven sing the song of Moses 
and the song of the Lamb. 

See now what a sweeping issue the Bishop has raised. 
If Moses was not an actual person, if the Pentateuch 
be not historically true, then St. Peter was deceived, 
Stephen was deceived, St. Paul was deceived, Jude and 
St. John were deceived, then Isaiah and Jeremiah, and 
the sweet singer of Israel were all deceived ; for all 
these writers distinctly assert the personal existence of 
Moses, and the great facts of his narrative, as being 
matters of history ; and that he predicted the Messiah, 
and that the Messiali corresponds to the prediction of 



16 WHITHER THE BISHOP's 

Moses, who had written of Him as inspired by the 
Holy Spirit of God. Then all these writers either 
must have been deceived, or they must have written to 
deceive us. These are the horns of the dilemma ; on one 
or the other the Bishop must rest. If they didn't mean 
to deceive us (and he gives them credit for honesty), 
they were utterly deceived themselves; but whether 
the one or the other, the issue raised by the Bishop is, 
that his bark, launched upon the floods, lands upon 
shores dreary and desolate as the Arctic regions around 
the pole, on v/hich no living thing can grow, and no 
heart can beat, and no lungs can breathe. 

But I go farther than this. I must state also the 
most awful, but inevitable conclusion to which he im- 
pels us. He that spake as never man spake, the Lord 
of glory, the Prophet and the Teacher of His Church 
— I speak with the profoundest reverence — if the Bishop 
be right, was deceived, or has deceived us. If Bishop 
Colenso's conclusion be correct, I do not see how it is 
possible to escape this. For what does He say ? "As 
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must 
the Son of man be lifted up." What does that teach ? 
That the Saviour regarded the lifting up of the serpent 
by Moses as an actual historical fact. What does He 
say again in John v. 41 ? " Had ye believed Moses, ye 
would have believed me, for he wrote of me." But 
what does that prove ? That the writings of Moses 
were part of the rule of faith ; that the Jews ought to 
have believed that rule of faith ; that Moses was so in- 



BARK CARRIES HIH. 17 

sj^ired that he delineated with infallible precision the 
approaching Deliverer, although an interval of a thou- 
sand years and upwards intervened between the time 
that Moses wrote and the era in which the Saviour 
came. Then he says again, in Luke xx. 37, "ISTow 
that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the 
bush." The Saviour also says, Luke xvi. 29, "They 
have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. If 
they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they 
be persuaded, though one rose from the. dead." But 
what does this involve ? First, the Saviour teaches 
that Moses was a person; secondly, that Moses wrote 
what bore his name amidst the Jewish people ; thirdly, 
that what he wrote was sufficient to show to men the 
way to heaven so clearly, that they would not see it 
more clearly if one were to rise from the dead. But 
Bishop Colenso says that Moses did not write the Pen- 
tateuch, that the Pentateuch does not contain literal 
history; therefore it follows, if Bishop Colenso be 
right, that the Saviour must have been misinformed, 
or that the Saviour has misled ; and that it was reserv- 
ed for a Bishop of Natal, in Africa, to illuminate the 
world in the nineteenth century, and to shed upon all 
its mysteries, its problems, its fears, and its hopes, a 
light and truth which He that spake as man never spake 
did not reach. 

But the Bishop himself seems staggered at this con- 
clusion, and therefore in his introduction, page 31, lie 
endeavors to make an apology ; but, like most apolo- 



18 WHITHER THE BISHOP's 

gies, it leaves the matter not only unmended, but worse 
than it was before ; he says, " It may be said that such 
words, if understood in this literal sense, can only be 
supposed to apply to certain parts of the Pentateuch, 
since most devout Christians will admit that the last 
chapter of Deuteronomy, which records the death of 
Moses, could not have been written by his hand." 
Well, we all admit so much. But then how do we ex- 
plain it ? Why, every body knows that the division of 
the Bible into chapters is a very recent thing, and that 
the division of it into texts or verses is a still more re- 
cent thing ; and every body knows that some of the 
chapters are so badly divided, that if it would not in- 
flict great inconvenience on the Christian Church, it 
would be much better to re-divide them. You will 
find, for instance, in Isaiah, broken and interrupted 
narratives ; an instance is found in the 5 2d and 53d of 
Isaiah ; we find a chapter sometimes ends with a verse 
that is incomplete, so that you must look to the next 
chapter for its conclusion. Now, it is in keeping with 
this to suppose that the last chapter of Deuteronomy 
ought to be the first chapter of the book that follows, 
but has been added to Deuteronomy instead of being 
prefixed to Joshua ; and that it is so is obvious from 
the mark of dislocation, to which I must ask you to 
turn, because it will be an answer to the very foolish 
objection of the Bishop of Natal. Deuteronomy, chap- 
ter 33, contains the following paragraph: "And this 
is the blessini^ wherewith Moses the man of God bless- 



BARK CARRIES HIM. 19 

ed the children of Israel before his death." That 
blessing is beautifallv expressed in the 33d of Deuter- 
onomy, closing with the sublime woi'ds, " Happy art 
thou, O Israel ; who is like unto thee, O peoj^le saved 
by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the 
sword of thy excellency ? and thine enemies shall be 
found liars unto thee ; and thou shalt tread upon their 
high places." The 34th chapter unquestionably de- 
scribes the death of Moses. But if you turn to the 
book of Joshua, which you find by turning over the 
leaf, you will see there the very passage that falls in 
with the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy : " Now after 
the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to 
pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua," implying that 
the writer of the book of Joshua had previously given 
an account of the death of his servant Moses. And 
therefore this 34th chapter of Deuteronomy is really 
the first chapter of the book of Joshua, and the first 
must be the second chapter of that book. The mis- 
placement of a chapter should not be made the founda- 
tion of so grave a charge. 

He says in the next place, " But secondly, and more 
generally, it may be said that, in making use of such 
expressions, our Lord did but accommodate His words 
to the current popular language of the day, as when 
He speaks, for instance, of God making His sun to 
rise." He says, " Our Lord did but accommodate His 
words to the current popular language of the day." 
Can any one believe that ? If He accommodated His 



20 WHITHER THE BISHOP'S 

words to the popular language of the day, what does 
our Lord mean by quoting the prophecy, " A prophet 
shall the Lord your God raise up like unto me from 
among your brethren ; Him shall ye hear in all things ? " 
If that did not refer to our Lord, then it was unjustifi- 
able untruth to say that it did so ; if it did refer to our 
Lord, then it is irresistible proof that Moses, a person, 
actually so said, and that what he said is so far inspired 
record. But the popular belief of the day, instead of 
favoring what the Saviour taught, ran cross to it ; and 
to have accommodated His language to the popular no- 
tions of the day would have been to have spoken just 
the reverse of what He actually spoke ; for the whole 
belief of the day was against what He claimed to be, 
and hostile to what He taught ; and because He so 
taught they crucified Him ; and because He would not 
accommodate His words, and the words of Moses, to 
the popular language of the day, but speak forth the 
words of everlasting truth, they shouted with a nation- 
al voice, " Not this man, but Barabbas," and they cru- 
cified Him between two thieves. 

But Bishop Colenso goes farther. He says, "It is 
not to be supposed that Jesus in His human nature was 
acquainted, more than any educated Jew of the age, 
with all the mysteries of all modern science ; nor, with 
St. Luke's expressions before us, can it be seriously 
maintained that, as an infant, or young child, He pos- 
sessed a knowledge surpassing that of most of the pious 
and learned adults of the Hebrew nation upon the sub- 



BAEK CARRIES HIM. 21 

ject of the authorship and nature of the different parts 
of the Pentateuch." Now, let us see what this lan- 
guage implies. He says that Jesus increased in wis- 
dom as He grew in stature ; this is unquestionably true. 
But the question before us is not what Jesus knew as 
an infant, or whether He was more enlightened as a 
child than Hebrew adults, but what He was when He 
stood forth in the midst of the world, the great Teach- 
er, the only Priest, the supreme King of His Church. 
If He knew no more at thirty years of age, when He 
assumed the great functions of the infallible and univer- 
sal Teacher, than the HebrcAV adults, His coterapora- 
ries, what have we left us to rely upon? What He 
taught as the resurrection of the dead, if the Bishop be 
right, may be a myth ; what He taught as pardon of 
sins through His precious blood, may be a mistake; 
when He taught the immortality of the soul and the 
hopes of glory, he may have taught delusions. The 
Bishop must sink into Socinianism, but he can not sto]) 
even there ; his bark, that is afloat upon the floods, 
must carry him to shores more desert, and more distant 
still. If Jesus was not the perfect Teacher of perfect 
truth when He taught in the synagogue and on the 
streets of Jerusalem, He was not the perfect Priest, nor 
the perfect Sacrifice, nor the perfect Atonement. The 
anchors of our faith are lifted; Christendom is afloat 
upon a stormy, dreary, and tempestuous sea; and either 
the Bishop is ignorant, rash, and reckless, or the Sav- 
iour was deceived, or has deceived us. That is the 



22 WHITHER THE BISHOP's 

issue he himself lias raised, and there is no other con- 
clusion to which it is possible for us to come. 

Such, then, is the necessary result of the teaching of 
Bishop Colenso. He himself seems to have anticipated 
it, for he admits the possibility of people regarding all 
in this light. If Bishop Colenso's position be right, 
that the Pentateuch is not true, that Moses did not 
write it, or that whoever did write it knew nothing of 
the facts of the case, and took no part in the incidents 
recorded in it ; then I say Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi, 
David, John, Peter, Stephen, St. Paul, and last and not 
least, the Lord of glory, were deceived and deluded 
also. 

The Bishop adds, at page 152, when he is looking 
back at the shores to w^hich his bark has carried him, 
"The results of scientific criticism" — I call them in 
this instance the results of episcopal delusion and folly 
— " the results of scientific criticism applied to the ex- 
amination of the letter of the Scriptures will also soon 
be acknowledged as facts " — I believe that every sane 
man will acknowledge these words to be whims — 
" which must be laid as the basis of all sound religious 
teaching." Further he adds, " In view of this change, 
which I believe is near at hand, and in order to avert 
the shock which our children's faith must otherwise 
experience when they find, as they certainly will before 
long, that the Bible can no longer be regarded as in- 
fallibly true in matters of common history." He anti- 
cipates the shock that will be felt by our children when 



BAKK CAKRIES HIM. 23 

they hear a Bishop of the Church of England state that 
the Scripture can no longer be regarded as infallibly 
true in matters of common history. Then you ask, 
does he retain any thing of Christianity at all ? He 
says, " Let us teach the children to look for the sign of 
God's Spirit speaking to them in the Bible, in that of 
which their own hearts alone can be the judges, of 
which the heart of the simple child can judge as well, 
and often, alas ! better than that of the self-willed phi- 
losopher, critic, or sage." 

He teaches that there are bits of the Bible which are 
revelations of the Infinite, but that these bits of the 
Bible each man must discern and select for himself; in 
other words, that the rule of faith is the intellect and 
conscience of the individual reader within, not the law 
and the testimony, the written and inspired record of 
God without. But if it be true that the heart of man 
is corrupt; if it be true that conscience itself is debili- 
tated, diseased, and weakened, then it is obvious that 
man will select as most inspired that portion of the 
Scriptures which best dovetails with his foregone con- 
clusions. The thief will justify his dishonesty, the 
licentious man his iniquity, the sinner his guilt; and 
left to pick and choose the portions that we may think 
inspired, we shall select the portions (for such is the 
actual depravity of the human heart) that most com- 
pletely fall in with our own condition, our conscious 
condition, in the sight of God, and we shall belie^^e 
those bits to be inspired which suit our taste, and ac- 



24 WHITHER THE BISHOP'S 

commodate om* jDassions, and minister to om- lusts, ap- 
parently in tlie greatest fullness and with greatest ease. 
In other words, if I may judge of Bishop Colenso's con- 
clusion, it is this: that just as nature contains in it 
traces of a God, though covered by the stain of sin, so 
the Bible has in it fragments of the truth of God, which 
every individual must select for himself, and accept or 
reject according as his own prejudices and ]3assions dic- 
tate. In other w'ords. Bishop Colenso plarys into the 
hands of BishojD Wiseman, so that it is not improbable 
that the two bishops will shake hands, and logically 
row together in Dr. Colenso's bark. For what is Dr. 
Wiseman's opinion ? That the Bible is a mere hetero- 
geneous and perplexing mass ; that no man can under- 
stand it, or make any thing of it, or pick his Avay to 
heaven out of it, unless he have the illuminating pre- 
sence of the priest, and the • Church, and tradition. 
Bishop Colenso is clearing the way for the progress of 
the bark of Bishop Wiseman. He substantially says, 
" You, Dr. Wiseman, have spoken what is literal truth ; 
the Bible is not infallible ; great portions of it w^ere not 
written by Moses, the rest of it is not very intelligible, 
it is not historically true ; there are bits of it w^hicli are 
true, fragments W'hich are Divine, but poor illiterate 
man can't be expected to pick them out w^ith any cer- 
tainty ; we must therefore appeal to the Church, to the 
Pope, to tradition, to the priest, in order to teach us 
what is and what is not Scripture ; and when we have 
found W' hat is Scripture, to teach us also w^hat it means. 



BARK CARRIES HIM. 25 

and to what it ultimately tends." I have shown in 
these pages what is the issue that the Bishop has raised, 
what are the shores to which the waters on which he 
has set afloat his bark must necessarily carry him. 

Meanwhile, let us no less hold fast the teaching of 
prophets, the lessons of apostles, the beautiful instruc- 
tions of Him who spake as never man spake ; and regard 
all that has been said by the Bishop of Natal as not 
weighing one straw against the solemn, the true, the 
precious conclusion, "All Scripture," from Moses to 
Revelation, " is given by inspiration of God, and is 
profitable." 

Dr. Adler, the Chief Rabbi of the Jews, thus justly 
rebukes a chief Minister of the Christian Church : — 

"Had the author studied the Bible with a little 
greater attention, we should not have been favored with 
the outburst of his virtuous indignation, and the Zulu 
Kafiir would have been taught the true meaning of Ex. 
xxi. 20 — 22. Bishop Colenso would have discovered 
that the commandment does not refer to murder with 
malice prepense^ but to accidental manslaughter ; and 
that still, if the slave died under his master's hand, ' it 
is to be avenged' (for this is the true translation, not 
' he shall be punished'). And this expression he would 
have found explained by the ancient commentators to 
mean, execution by the sword. 

" But, in fact, there is scarcely one difficulty, one ima- 
gined contradiction or impossibility, raised and gloated 
over by him, which has not already been touched upon 

2 



26 WHITHER THE BISHOP'S BARK, ETC. 

and satisfactorily explained by one of the Jewish ex- 
positors. Thus the prohibition in Deut. xxiii. 12, is 
explained by them to refer only to the outside of the 
camp of Levites, and the whole difficulty vanishes. His 
Lordship may, indeed, claim originality for startlmg dis- 
coveries, such as he makes, e. g.^ about the Passover. 
Who but a smatterer in Hebrew would thus pervert 
the plain language of the text as to make it aj^pear 
that a Commandment to be observed on the 10th 
w^ould have been issued on the 14th of that month? 
But I must not encroach any further upon your valua- 
ble space. 

" In conclusion, let me ask Bishop Colenso one ques- 
tion. He forbids us from indulging the imagination, 
that God could only reveal Himself to us by means of 
an infallible book. Will he have us believe that God 
could reveal Himself through a book which contains 
Buch absurdities as he has discovered in it ?" 



CHAPTER II. 

THE FLOOD THE ARK GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 

I STATED in my last lecture that I would direct atten- 
tion to a work which has obtained far greater publicity 
than it deserves. Yet I believe it is one of those strange 
phenomena in God's providential government of the 
Church and of the world, which issue in greater glory 
to God, in good to His Church, vindication of His 
Word, and eventual benefit to thousands of mankind. 
Whatever Avas the design with which it was written, 
or whatever maybe the rashness with which the Bishop, 
the author of it, writes, I am persuaded, so illogical is 
his reasoning, so violent are his inductions, that as the 
result the truth of the Scripture will be vindicated with 
greater power, and the facts that he denies, disputes, 
or demurs to, will stand out in clearer, sharper, and 
more tangible relief. 

I showed in my last lecture that Bishop Colenso 
thinks — first, it is doubtful if ever there was such a 
person as Moses ; and, secondly, it is doubtful if he 
wrote the Pentateuch, if there was such a person ; and, 
third, if he did write it, its history is of no more actual 
value than any traditional work subsequently written, 
or any devout compilation of venerable tales. I may 
notice — what I mean to follow out afterwards — that 



28 THE FLOOD — THE ARK — 

the difficulties which beset a narrative are not proofs 
that the narrative is untrue. You should read Arch- 
bishop Whately's acute essay, written to prove that 
there never was such a person as Napoleon Bonaparte ; 
the meaning of it being, that by conjuring up all the 
difficulties which beset his history, you may come to 
the conclusion that such a person as Xapoleon Bona- 
parte never existed, that is, that there was no such per- 
son. Now I can prove — with greater force than the 
Bishop has proved that Moses never existed — that 
there is no such person in existence, or ever was, as 
Bishop Colenso — certainly that, if there be, he can not 
be the author of this book. I say, on precisely the 
same ground, and with precisely the same weapons, 
and for much the same reasons, I will engage to show 
that it is impossible to believe that such a writer as 
Bishop Colenso exists, or ever was Bishop of Natal, or 
is author of this book. I stated in last lecture that the 
Bishop believes his bark to be on the floods, and that 
the floods must carry it whithersoever they will. I 
showed where the floods logically and necessarily carry 
him. He says there was no such person as Moses, — 
that the Pentateuch, whether written by him or others, 
is not a true history, — that the alleged facts in it are 
not true facts. I showed that Isaiah believed they 
were, Jeremiah believed they were, the Apostle Peter 
and the Apostle Paul believed they were actual facts. 
And if you will read the eleventh chapter of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, you will se£> a summary of what the 



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 29 

Apostle Paul believed these facts to be. The proto- 
martyr Stephen, in his eloquent apology, believed they 
were facts. But, if they were not facts, and if Moses 
was not the writer, then Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Paul, 
Peter, John — all were deceived, or they were deceivers. 
There is no alternative ; either they were deceived, or 
they were deceivers. But the issue does not stop there ; 
the Saviour expressly appeals to Moses, expressly as- 
serts that his writings were sufficient to lead people to 
heaven : " If they believe not Moses and the prophets, 
neither would they repent if one were to rise from the 
dead." What must be the inference ? — that the Saviour 
also was deceived. But the Bishop we have seen an- 
ticipating such a consequence, endeavors to meet it. 
What is his defense ? That the Saviour was not more 
enlightened than other adult Jews of His age ; that 
He grew in wisdom, and therefore got better informed 
as He grew older. That is the monstrous conclusion 
to which a Bishop, ordained and consecrated to preach 
the everlasting Gospel, must come. But if that be 
true, if the Saviour was not the perfect Prophet, He 
was not the perfect Priest — He was not the perfect 
Sacrifice. The anchors of Christendom are lifted ; as 
we have seen we are drifting on an unknown and desert 
ocean, without a compass, without a chart, without a 
haven, without a pilot, and without a hope. 

In this lecture I take up one single point. I will not 
occupy each lecture in discussing one point ; but there 
is one so important, and which we can meet on his own 



30 THE FLOOD — THE ARK — 

grounds, that I think it is well that I sliould keep your 
attention to it exclusively in this lecture. It is from 
his account of his interview with a Zulu. He says : 
" While translating the story of ' The Flood ' into the 
Zulu language, I have had a simple-minded but intelli- 
gent native — one with the docility of a child, but the 
reasoning powers of mature age — look up and ask, 
' Is all that true ? Do you. Bishop, really believe that 
all this happened thus ; that all the beasts, and birds 
and creeping things upon the earth, large and small, 
from hot countries and cold, came thus by pairs, and 
entered into the ark with Noah ? And did Noah 
gather food for them all — for the beasts and birds of 
prey, as well as the rest.' " But what did the Bishop 
say ? " My heart answered in the words of the pro- 
phet, ' Shall a man speak lies in the name of the Lord ?' 
I dared not do so. My own knowledge of some 
branches of science — of geology in particular" — It is 
of geology in particular that the Bishop seems to have 
been particularly ignorant, for it appears to me that if 
he had known a little geology, he would not have been 
thus beaten in argument by an African Zulu. He says, 
"My own knowledge of some branches of science — 
of geology in particular — had been much increased 
since I left England." I fear it must have been a little 
decreased, or, at all events, the increase must have been 
of a very infinitesimal description. " And I now knew 
for certain, on geological grounds, a fact of which I 
had only had misgivings before — namely, that a uni- 



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 31 

versal deluge, such as the Bible manifestly speaks of, 
could not possibly have taken place in the way described 
in the Book of Genesis, not to mention other difficulties 
which the story contains. I refer especially to the cir- 
cumstance, well known to all geologists (see Lyell's 
Elementary Geology^ pp. 197, 198), that volcanic hills 
exist, of immense extent, in Auvergne and Languedoc, 
which must have been formed ages before the Noachian 
Deluge, and which are covered with light and loose 
substances, pumice-stone, etc., that must have been 
swept away by a flood, but do not exhibit the slightest 
sign of having ever been so disturbed. Of course, I 
am well aware that some have attempted to show that 
Noah's Deluge was only a partial one. But such at- 
tempts have ever seemed to me to be made in the very 
teeth of the Scripture statements, which are as plain 
and explicit as words can possibly be. Nor is any thing 
really gained by supposing the Deluge to have been 
partial. For as waters must find their own level on the 
earth's surface, without a special miracle, of which the 
Bible says nothing, a flood which should begin by cov- 
ering the top of Ararat (if that were conceivable), or 
a much lower mountain, must necessarily become imi- 
versal, and in due time sweep over the hills of Auvergne. 
Knowing this, I felt that I dared not, as a servant of 
the God of truth, urge my brother man to believe that 
which I did not myself believe, which I knew to be un- 
true, as a matter-of-fact historical narrative." 

Such is Bishop Colenso's opinion of the Deluge. It 



82 THE FLOOD — THE ARK — 

seems, the first discussion he had with a Zulu had a 
most disastrous efiect upon the Bishop. I have read 
of a zealous Protestant lady, who went all the way to 
Rome to convert the Pope, and — unhappy woman ! — 
the Pope succeeded in converting her ; and she came 
back a bigoted and thorough Roman Catholic. Bishop 
Colenso was consecrated, and is now paid, to convert 
the Zulus ; and the real and actual fact, which cer- 
tainly is not unhistorical, is that the Zulu has convert 
ed the Bishop, inducing him to renounce the very 
truth-s and doctrines that he went out to establish. 
The Zulu said, " Is it possible that all these beasts can 
have been collected from all climates ?" — the Zulu for- 
getting, and the Bishop omitting to tell him, that it is 
not certain there existed very great difference of cli- 
mate before the Flood. This is not an ascertained 
fact — but it is a probable inference. On this, however, 
I will not lay stress. But the Zulu put the question, 
" How is it possible that they could have collected 
them into the ark? How is it possible that Noah 
could have got food for them ?" I think I could have 
helped the Zulu to a few additional objections and 
arguments. For instance, might not the Zulu have 
argued, " How could Noah Jiave built an immense 
ship, when he was no ship-carpenter, having never 
served an apprenticeship to the trade, and, as far as 
the narrative goes, having never been instructed how 
to lay one plank above another ? That must have 
been a great difiiculty. Besides, how could Noah 



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 83 

have steered this ship through a stormy and troubled 
sea, when the m^^riner's compass was not invented, 
when there was no chart, and he had not, so far as we 
know, acquired the art of observing even the lode-stars 
in the sky to guide him to steer his ship ? How could 
these things be ?" The Zulu could have called up a 
thousand difficulties in the way of the accomplishment 
of the historical fact recorded in Genesis. But the 
Bishop, in his answer, seems to have forgotten all the 
while that God was the Author of the Flood, that God 
was the personal instructor of ISToah ; that Omnipo- 
tence, and Omnipresence, and Omniscience, were chart, 
and compass, and steersman to the ark upon that dark 
and stormy sea. It is easy to put difficulties ; it is 
easy to ask, How could this be — how could that be ? 
We must recollect, the whole of Genesis is the narra- 
tive of a special supernatural economy ; that it lifts 
the vail, and shows behind it God in the history and in 
the acts of that early portion of the human family. If 
it were a mere human narrative, one could see perplex- 
ities ; if it were a mere record that man had drawn up 
without inspiration, one could understand and might 
naturally ask, how this was possible, and how that Avas 
likely, and how improbable something else. But it is 
expressly stated that God spake to Noah, " I do bring 
a flood ;" it is expressly stated that " God shut him 
in ;" it is expressly stated that Noah walked with 
God, and God was with Noah. All this is evidence 

that we are reading a supernatural history, revealing 
2* 



84 THE FLOOD — THE ARK — 

facts that we might easily have inferred, but could not 
have understood the origin, or the reason, or the bear- 
ing of. And therefore the Apostle Paul proved him- 
self the highest philosopher, when he said, " By faith 
Noah, being warned of God, prepared an ark, and be- 
came heir of the righteousness that is by faith." 

But let me proceed a little farther, and meet the 
Bishop on his own ground. He thinks the whole 
story unlikely and improbable from the difficulties that 
attend it ; that it was impossible the ark could have 
held all these animals out of warm climates and cold 
climates ; and that therefore the high probability is 
that it is a piece of beautiful romance, with no founda- 
tion in actual history. Let me remind you first what 
was the size of the ark ; it was 300 cubits in length, 
by 50 cubits in breadth, and 30 cubits in height. Take 
the cubit on the lowest measurement, though most 
have taken it at the highest. The word cuhit is drawn 
from a Latin word, which means the distance from the 
elbow of an ordinary sized man to the extremity of his 
longest finger ; and measures, on an average calcula- 
tion, one foot and a half. Well, the ark was 300 cubits 
in length — that is, it must have been 450 feet in length : 
it was 50 cubits in breadth, that is 75 feet broad ; it 
was 30 cubits in height, that is 45 feet high. Accord- 
ing to the way of calculating the tonnage of shijDS, the 
tonnage of the ark must have been about 40,000 tons. 
The DuJce of Wellington^ one of our largest war ships 
— carrying, I believe, 130 guns — is registered under 



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 85 

4,000 tons. I have said the ark, accordmg to this cal- 
culation, must have been 40,000 tons ; the ark, there- 
fore, must have been in capacity equal to ten large 
ships of the line the size of the Diike of Wellington. 
What does the Duke of Wellington war ship carry ? 
She carries 130 guns. She has a crew, etc., of 1,200 
men ; she takes ammunition, powder, shot, shell, and 
all sorts of provision for war, for probably six months 
or twelve months. She could carry, besides all this, a 
considerable body of passengers. I may assume, there- 
fore, that if the ark was equal in tonnage to ten ships 
of the line the size of the Duke of Wellington^ the ark 
must have been able to carry at least 12,000 men, and 
stores equal to the weight of 1,300 guns, and of pow- 
der, shot, shell, and provision, or what would be equiv- 
alent, for a year. If so, and if it be also true that all 
the distinct species of four-footed animals can be re- 
duced to a comparatively small number, there was 
room enough. I need not add that the fish, and a few 
i. mammalia, as the whale, etc., which the Bishop, I sus- 

<jr?^, pect, has forgotten, did not want a shelter in the ark ; 

P^^ j;^ the water was their element, and therefore they were 
not preserved in the ark. I do not think that worms 
and insects necessarily need have been preserved in the 
j^^ ark. But birds were taken into it, and mammalia, 
^ consisting mostly of four-footed animals ; and, beside 

these, we can see, I fancy, abundant space in the ark 
for two or three thousand families, instead of eight 
persons — for two or three thousand more tribes, gene- 



36 THE FLOOD — THE ARK — 

ra, and species of mammalia and birds ; and tliat, in 
the language of a very able Bishop of the Church of 
England, Bishop Wilkins — and I wish Bishop Colenso 
had only read or attended to what he says — " Of the 
two things, it is much more difficult to assign a num- 
ber and bulk of creatures necessary to answer the 
capacity of the ark, than to find sufficient room for 
the several species of animals necessarily admitted 
into it." In other words, Bishop Colenso says the 
ark must have been far too small ; Bishop Wilkins 
says it was far too large. TThich Bishop am I to 
believe ? I appeal from both to figures, and infer 
that there was plenty of room, and room to sj^are ; 
and that Bishop Colenso, one of the ablest mathema- 
ticians and arithmeticians of the day, unquestionably 
so, has certainly here miscalculated ; and that the 
Zulu has not been answered as he might have been, 
when he objected to these facts as impossible ever 
to have occurred in actual history. 

Suppose you extinguish the history of Moses, or 
suppose you regard it as an unreal but beautiful ro- 
mance, do you extinguish the records of such a fact as 
a universal deluge ? I answer, " Xo." Sup]30se the 
Mosaic narrative were proved unhistorical to-day, the 
evidence of a universal flood is so great, so wide-spread 
— in fact, so jDreserved in varied shapes, that no intelli- 
gent man can easily escape the conviction that such a 
flood some time must have occurred in the history of 
our world. First, the Phoenician writer Sanchoniathon, 



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 37 

praised by Josephiis, tlie liistorian of the fall of the 
Jewish capital, the splendid capital of his country, 
speaks of Noah and the Flood, mentions his grandson 
Mizraim as twelfth in descent, precisely as we find it in 
Genesis ; and this was written long before the birth of 
Christ. Berosus the Chaldean says, " The whole human 
race was once buried, except Noah and his family, 
saved in a ship." Lucian, a Pagan writer, says, "All 
flesh was drowned except Deucalion" — the name that 
the Greeks and Romans gave to Noah — "except 
Deucalion and his family, on account of its impiety." 
And Plutarch adds, "Deucalion sent out a bird on his 
voyage, as it drew near to a close." Here are incidental 
allusions in history that seem conclusive that it was an 
extensive traditional belief that such a fa<?t as the 
Deluge actually occurred. A very admirable writer, 
Captain Charles Knox, in a work called The ArJc and 
the Deluge^ says, " Difiicult as it may be to fix the ex- 
act epoch of this wonderful event, all nations concur 
that such an event did take place. Traditions of a flood 
which swept the human race, with very few exceptions, 
from the face of the earth, have been traced amongst 
the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Phcenicians, the As- 
syrians, the Persians of times long passed away ; and 
the more recently discovered American Indians of the 
North, the Mexicans, the Peruvians, the Islanders of 
the Pacific — Greek, Roman, Goth, Celt, Chinese, Hin- 
doo — all preserve the recollection of a mighty catastro- 
phe ;" a universality of belief, I contend, that goes so 



38 THE FLOOD — THE ARK — • 

far to confirm, if confirmation be needed, the literal 
historic fact recorded in the Book of Genesis. And 
perhaps if Bishop Colenso had cross-questioned the 
Zulu with the sagacity Tvith which the Zulu cross- 
questioned him, he might have discovered that the 
Zulu had also in his traditions some record of the same 
great fact of a deluge that overflowed the whole earth. 
But the Bishop lays a great stress upon geology. 
The Flood is not of course to be found in the great 
pre-Adamite or geological epochs, — there is no trace of 
it to be discovered there ; but I maintain still, and not 
on my own authority, but on the authority of many 
competent and able judges, that traces of some such 
catastrophe are in the drift, and also on the alluvial de- 
posits of the globe on which we now live. Dr. Buck- 
land, in a most able work, called ReliqidcB Diluviance^ 
— or, as I might translate it, Diluvian Remains, or the 
Remains of the Flood — refers to what he calls valleys 
of denudation, being valleys that have been denuded, 
as evidence of some such diluvial catastrophe ; as, for 
instance, valleys now inclosed between hills, indicating 
by their structure that they constituted one ridge ; and 
now cloven, or rather the intermediate matter suddenly 
swept away by water. You could conceive, for in- 
stance, a wall of solid brick, extending a quarter of a 
mile ; if you were to see a great fracture in that solid 
wall, of some hundred yards in width, what would you 
argue? — that some great force must have pressed 
against and driven out a portion of the brickwork ; and 



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 39 

the opposite sides would indicate that they had once 
been connected. Just as in the great geological epochs 
— long before the Flood, and long before the history of 
our race — the sea between Dover and Boulogne, or be- 
tween Dover and Calais, indicates that the sites of 
these two towns must have been once united, and that 
denudation, convulsion, or upheaval must have torn 
them asunder. Since the introduction of our race into 
this orb, many hold it irresistibly proved that great 
ridges of hills have been suddenly struck by some over- 
whelming rush of water, and rent in twain by the in- 
termediate matter being swept away or denuded. 
Among the places sjoecially quoted by Dr. Buckland is 
Devonshire,, where he says there are evidences of 
mountains rent into valleys running to the sea, in 
which there is no river, containing the remains of ani- 
mals belonging to our dynasty that must have been 
destroyed by some sudden irruptive flood. I said 
Bishop Colenso was 23laying into the hands of Bishop 
Wiseman — not intentionally, of course — but that the 
logic of his reasoning leads to that. Dr. Wiseman, 
however, wrote a very able book on a subject of which 
he is a very competent judge, called Science in Con- 
nection with Revealed Religion, Dr. Wiseman states 
the following fact — a fact any one can establish : 
" At Greifenstein, in Saxony, there is a number of gran- 
itic prisms, standing upon a plain, and rising to the 
height of 100 feet and upwards. Each of these is di- 
vided by horizontal fissures into so many blocks, and 



40 THE FLOOD — THE ARK — 

tlius they present the idea of a great mass of granite, 
the connecting parts of which have been violently torn 
away. In like manner we find the rocks scored with 
furrows, as if a vast current, bearing heavy masses of 
rock along, had passed over its surface." Xow here 
is a very striking fact. We find these granite rocks on 
the surface ; and we find them thus severed and scored. 
We can conceive that an enormous volume of water, 
rushing from the north to the south, as I will show, 
Avith tremendous force and fearful weight — carrying 
rocks, icebergs, and ruins of all sorts in its waters — 
had rushed through the intermediate parts of these 
granite rocks, equal by their position and theii* strength 
to resist it — that these rocks would bear the marks of 
the great rush of waters, and ice, and stones that had 
swept by them, and scored them with fm-rows. Such 
furrows and such scorings are accordingly discovered 
at this moment. Xear Darlington, Dr. Buckland, the 
great geologist, collected pebbles of more than twenty 
sorts of greenstone rock and slate, which belong to the 
lake district of Cumberland ; and one block of granite 
near Darlington, which must have come from the Shap- 
fells, near Penrith. Mr. Phillips, another eminent geo- 
logist, says, " The diluvium of Holderness contains 
fragments of rocks, not only from Cmnberland, but from 
Xorway. In Sweden large rocks occur which have 
been borne evidently from the north to south." 
" In America," says Dr. Bigsby, " the shores and lake 
of Mount Huron appear to have been subjected to the 



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 41 

action of a violent rush of water. That such a flood did 
happen is proved, not only by the abraded state of the 
surface of the northern main land, but by the immense 
deposits of sand and rolled masses of rock, which are 
found in heaps at every level ; since these fragments 
are almost exclusively primitive, and can be in some 
instances identified with the primitive rocks in situ in 
their position on the northern shore of the lake." — 
Geological Transactions^ Vol. I., p. 205. It is only fair 
to add, whilst quoting these most competent authori- 
ties — deriving their weight, not from their assertions, 
but from their observations of actual phenomena, to the 
effect that some great flood must have rushed over the 
surface of our earth — that other geologists, as Sir 
Charles Lyell, with great ingenuity, try to dispose of 
these facts upon some such grounds, for instance, as 
the following: they think that the valleys, such as 
those in Devonshire, have been excavated, not by the 
violent rush of some such universal deluge as that 
which is recorded in the Mosaic history, but by rivers 
that have gradually subsided and dried up. But we 
answer — water has no such cutting power as he as- 
scribes to it. Dr. Wiseman will be here my best au- 
thority. He says, " The rich vegetation of mosses on 
the surface of the rocks at and below the water's edge, 
proves that the rocks on which they grow are not con- 
stantly worn away. For instance, in the Nile and the 
Orinoco : in spite of the vast force of the vast vol- 
ume of water which rolls down the channels of 



42 THE FLOOD— THE ARK — 

these rivers, the water, so far from Avearing out the 
rocks, covers these rocks with a rich bro\vii varnish of 
a peculiar nature." If you look at the sides of a river, 
you will see that the rush of the waters has not cut nor 
cloven the rocks, but simply covered them with exquis- 
ite tiny forests, beautiful and green — that, looked at 
with a microscope, have all the beauties of a miniature 
forest. Sir Roderick Murchison, a living geologist of 
high attainments, makes the following statement in the 
Geological Transactions^ Vol. II., j). 357. Writing of 
Brora, in Sutherlandshire, a county that I have examin- 
ed, he says, '' These hills in Sutherlandshire probably 
owe their origin to denudation, which sujDposition is 
confirmed by the exposure on the surface of innumera- 
ble parallel furrows and irregular scratches, both deep 
and shallow ; such, in short, as can scarcely have been 
produced by any other operation than the rush of rocky 
fragments transported by some powerful current. The 
furrows and scratches," he adds, " ajDpear to have been 
made by stones of all sizes, which preserve a general 
parallelism from north-west to south-east." All these 
traces of a great rushing flood, bearing on its surface 
rocks and ruins with irresistible force, scratching and 
scoring the rocks which it swept past by the rocks and 
ice that it swept before it, and universally from north 
to south, or from north-west to south — demonstrate, 
therefore, with a unity and force, in all places, that such 
must have been the direction of some overwhelming 
current that may have been earlier than Adam, but may 



GEOLOaiCAL EVIDENCE. 43 

have been the Noachian Deluge. Cuvier, the most 
celebrated physiological writer, says : ^' The last revo- 
lution that disturbed the globe can not be very ancient. 
I think, with M. Deluc, that if there be any thing de- 
monstrated in geology, it is this — that the surface of our 
globe has been the victim of a great and sudden revo- 
lution, of which the date can not be much more than 
5000 years." Now take all these authorities, the most 
competent in the world, and refuse the authorities as 
against Bishop Colenso — take the facts that they state 
— and the inference maybe, that if Moses were to hold 
his tongue, creation would open its stony lips ; and if 
you disbelieve what is written in the Mosaic page, you 
may open your eyes, and read what is written upon the 
stony surface of the globe. The very stones would thus 
cry out and rebuke the Bishop of Natal. 

There is advanced by the Bishop, in the next place, 
what seems to him a puzzle, that there are " certain 
volcanic hills in Auvergne and Languedoc which must 
have been formed ages before the Noachian Deluge, 
and which are covered with light and loose substances, 
pumice-stone, etc., that must have been swept away by 
a flood, but do not exhibit the slightest sign of having 
ever been so disturbed." My first answer to that is : 
Suppose you have twenty witnesses that say, " I saw 
such a thing ;" and suppose one witness stands up and 
says, " I didn't see it ;" would you place this one nega- 
tive testimony against the positive testimony of the 
others ? Now, the Bishop says, '' Whatever be these 



44 THE FLOOD — THE ARK — 

asserted proofs of a universal deluge, whatever be these 
records upon the stony page, yet there is one fact that 
is to me conclusive against it all — namely, that there 
are some loose pumice-stones uj)on some volcanic hills 
in Auvergne and Languedoc, which I think the Flood 
ought to have swept away, but which the Flood did 
not sweep away ; therefore the Flood can not have 
taken place." But will the Bishop prove — which, mind 
you, he must prove, in order to give any force to the 
fact that he quotes — that the last eruption of these vol- 
canic mountains occurred before, not after the Flood ? 
If it occurred before, it would only go to prove what 
some Christians hold, that the Flood was not univers- 
al; but, as he can prove no such thing, the pumice- 
stone, the tufa, the ashes that remain, may have burst 
forth from the volcanoes not a hundred, or five hun- 
dred, or a thousand years ago. Nay, if the last erup- 
tion occmTed nearly 4,000 years ago, that would not 
prove that the Flood had not taken place. What the 
Bishop is required to demonstrate, and what he can not 
demonstrate, is, that the eruption of these volcanic 
hills took place before the Flood. The superstructure 
raised on the assumed antiquity of layers of lava, etc., 
is of very questionable value. 

It will be argued, perhaps, by some. Why, if such a 
fact took place, if there was such a vessel constructed 
as the ark, why have we no trace of it or its contents 
in the drift or elsewhere ? Captain Knox, in the work 
I have already referred to, makes a very striking state- 



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 45 

ment upon the probability that the ark still actually 
exists ; that in this marvelous age, when the Alps are 
climbed and the avalanches are embraced, some one 
may ascend Ararat, and discover in the forsaken bed 
of an ancient avalanche traces of the ark. This officer 
writes thus : — 

" The whole country about the present Mount Ararat 
abounds with traditions " — this is another curious and 
suggestive, if not corroborative fact — " the whole coun- 
try about the present Mount Ararat abounds with tra- 
ditions about ISToah and the Deluge. The Armenians 
call the mountain Massissenssar, or the Mountain of 
the Ark ; the Persians call it Koh-i-ISTuh, or the Moun- 
tain of Noah. It is a common belief in the neighbor- 
hood that the ark still exists on the summit of Mount 
Ararat, the wood being converted into stone ; a belief 
the former part of which has a better foundation than 
might at first sight appear. The ark, it will be ob- 
served, rested on the mountains of Ararat compara- 
tively early in the Deluge, before half the period of 
submergence was accomplished, and upwards of ten 
weeks before the mountains made their appearance. It 
appears from this that the ark must have taken ground 
upon the upper Ararat, by far the loftiest mountain in 
the vicinity; and, from the length of time which elapsed 
before the other mountains began to appear above wa- 
ter, we must infer that its final resting-place was at an 
altitude great in itself, and considerably above the low- 
er Ararat, which did not become visible for more than 



46 THE FLOOD— THE ARK — 

two months. Now the summit of tlie lower Ararat is 
covered with snow for the greater part of the year, 
though a partial clearance in summer serves as a guide 
to the inhabitants of the plain ; but the summit of the 
upper Ararat, soaring to an elevation of more than 
seventeen thousand feet above the level of the sea, is 
thousands of feet above the line of perpetual snow. At 
that low temperature, all decay must have been in- 
stantly arrested ; wood, frozen as hard and as cold as 
iron, must have remained unchanged and unchangeable 
under the dominion of perpetual frost. Even animal 
matter, as is evidenced by the w^inter markets in cold 
countries, will, when once completely frozen, remain an 
indefinite time without corruption setting in. And we 
have the most express assurance that the ordinary rela- 
tionship of seasons, temperature, and cold, were re-es- 
tablished upon the earth: 'While the earth remaineth, 
seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and win- 
ter, day and night, shall not cease.' If, therefore," he 
continues, " the Ararat of the present day be identical 
with the Ararat of Moses, which we have no reason to 
question, Noah must have left the ark — at a period 
which most commentators agree to have been the be- 
ginning of winter — in a position almost if not quite in- 
accessible to man, thus secure from violent destruction, 
in a temperature which would render natural decay im- 
possible. So that the simple belief of the Armenian 
peasants, in the existence of the ark upon these moun- 
tains, is founded upon the immutable law of nature ; 



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 47 

thougli tlie vessel itself is probably still buried under 
an accumulation of ice and snow that Avill forever 
screen it from the sight of man, unless some such con- 
vulsion of nature occur as that which in 1840, amid 
avalanches, and fissures, and landslips, detached huge 
masses of ice from the summit and sides of Ararat, 
should rend the icy prison, and reveal," — what, I add, 
may in these days of adventure be revealed — "this 
grand evidence — the ark still existing — of the truth of 
Scripture." 

How startled would Bishop Colenso be, were Ararat 
to open its snowy lips, as the rocks have opened theirs, 
and say, '' Thy word, O God, is truth !" 

The more recent geological solutions of the date of 
the drift I will consider in my next ; and there, on the 
lowest ground, show that the Bishop's geology is no 
better than his divinity. 

I have discussed his objections on the ground that 
the drift relates to and is contemporaneous with the 
dynasty of man. This ground has recently been given 
up by many geologists, owing to the remains being 
chiefly, not wholly, preadamite. Therefore I take up 
in the next lecture the more recent solutions, and from 
these I will show that neither a little geology, nor an 
increased knowledge of it, justifies the Bishop's conclu- 
sions. 



CHAPTER ni. 

THE FLOOD — XO DISPKOOF FEOM GEOLOGY. 

I RESUME the remarks which I made upon what 

Bishop Colenso calls the unhistorical incident recorded 
in Genesis, that is, the flood, which others, higher than 
Bishop Colenso, pronounce to be the literal description 
of an historical fact. I adduced traces of it, not only 
in the sacred page, but in the traditions of nations ; 
and, as many believe, in the physical history of the 
globe. I wish now to make some remarks additional 
to those which I presented in the previous lecture, 
justifying, on even narrower groimds, the charge we 
have made, that the Bishop is deluded ; that, to use 
his own language, his bark which he has launched on 
the floods, is carrying him whither he never dreamed ; 
and showing that the most irresistible logical consist- 
ency necessitates this prelate repudiating the whole 
Scriptures as a myth, and trusting to what he says is 
the only light that guides hiai now — the inner light of 
reason in his own soul. We have already quoted the 
words which he uses, in referring to the Deluge, in his 
remarkable volume, which so many have recently re- 
ferred to. In speaking of the Deluge, he says that his 
first knowledge of geology led him to believe that it 
was a strictly historical fact ; but that, as he has ira- 



THE FLOOD — NO DISPROOF FROM GEOLOGY. 49 

proved his geology since he left England and went to 
Natal, he has come to conclude that the Deluge is not 
an historical fact ; that there never was such an event 
in the history of the human race ; that the volcanic 
traces that remain in Auvergne and Languedoc de- 
monstrate it can not have occurred ; and then he con- 
cludes by saying : " For, as waters must find their own 
level on the earth's surface without a special m,iracle, 
of which the Bible says nothing." Now, what can the 
Bishop mean by that ? He declares the Flood was not 
a special miracle, and that the Bible says nothing of its 
being so. Why, the Bible says expressly that it was 
so. " I the Lord do bring a flood upon the earth." 
What means that ? He may quibble about the mean 
ing of the word miracle ; but the Flood was an act of 
Omnipotence, personal and direct, and it is asserted on 
the authority of that God that can not lie. He adds, 
" Knowing this, I felt that I dared not, as a servant of 
the God of truth, urge my brother man to believe that 
which I did not myself believe, which I knew to be 
untrue " — you see he is very positive — " as a matter-of- 
fact, historical narrative." You recollect the incident ; 
the Bishop was consecrated and paid to convert the 
Zulu Kaffirs, and most unfortunately the result has 
been that a Zulu Kaffir has converted him. This at 
least is plain, that the Bishop not only does not teach 
what he was sent out to teach, but the very opposite. 
No wonder that he says, "And now I tremble at the 
result of my inquiries." 
3 



50 THE FLOOD — 

111 meeting some of the Bishop's remarks in the last 
lecture, I assumed that the cubit was 1 foot 6 inches. 
This is the least favorable assumiDtion. The ark, ac 
cording to that, was 300 cubits, or 450 feet long, and 
proportionately broad and high. But, assuming what 
is probably more correct, that the cubit is really 1 foot 
9 inches, then the proportions of the ark w^ould be as 
follow : — the length of it 525 feet, or about the length 
of the Great Eastern steamship ; the breadth of it 
Avould be 87 feet 6 inches ; and the height of it would 
be 52 feet 6 inches ; and the capacity of the ark, calcu- 
lated in cubic feet, w^ould be 2,500,000 feet. I proved 
that it must have had the capacity of nearly ten ships 
of the size of the Duke of Wellington war-ship, one 
of our largest line-of-battle ships. Professor Hitch- 
cock, the eminent Christian and geologist, says, "Al- 
lowing that there are a thousand species of mammalia^ 
600 kinds of birds, 2,000 of reptiles, and 120,000 in- 
sects ;" — an allowance vastly larger than that which I 
suggested last lecture, and perhaps more correct — then 
Professor Hitchcock says, '' allow a million cubic feet 
for ma77i7nalia^^^ (that is, chiefly the four-footed beasts,) 
" 800,000 cubic feet for birds, 100,000 cubic feet for 
reptiles, and 100,000 feet for insects, and there would 
be half a million of cubic feet still left for Noah and 
his family," forming a very large and respectable suite 
of cabins. So that when we take the actual facts of 
the case, the improbability is diminished to the merest 
trifle ; and the certainty of course is that there was a 



NO DISPEOOF FROM GEOLOGY. 51 

provision, according to the historic record, be it true 
or be it false, adequate to all the demands and exigen- 
cies of the case. 

But, in sjDcaking of the traces of the Flood on the 
earth, I gave, in the first instance, the view that is not 
the most recent adoption of geologists — that the drifts 
which is next below the alluvimn^ and above which 
only is the alluvium^ bears irresistible traces of the 
Flood. Buckland, and some other geologists, allege 
that there is reason to believe that the drift very ex- 
tensively bears traces of a series of floods or convul- 
sions, which must have occurred long before the crea- 
tion of the dynasty of man — that is, in the earlier ages 
of the earth. But to give you the least favorable view 
that geology can present, and to show that even on 
that Bishop Colenso's ground is utterly untenable, I 
proceed to quote first what Hitchcock observes : — 
" Not a few geologists," he says, " admit that no such 
evidence of the occurrence of a general flood at any 
epoch exists ; while those who admit of a general 
deluge, for the most part regard it as having taken 
place anterior to man's existence on the globe ;" but 
he candidly adds, that after centuries of discussion, it 
is likely to be found out that the facts are very imper- 
fectly known in this direction. The first argument he 
employs against the possibility of the drifts as it is 
called, being the remains and result of the Flood, is 
the presence of extinct animals and plants, belonging 
to a creation anterior to man, especially if they exhibit 



52 THE FLOOD— 

a tropical character, as those do which are usually as- 
signed to the drift. That is his first argument against 
the drift being supposed to bear the traces and the 
marks of the Deluge. But then it assumes, you ob- 
serve, that the climate of the earth before the Flood 
was the same as that since the Flood. But, using the 
word tropical in its broad or figurative sense, we may 
well suppose that the climate of the earth previous to 
the flood, was far more tropical in every section than it 
has become since. We have every reason to believe 
that the temperature of the earth was materially alter- 
ed ; that the very structure of the atmosphere, in its 
relative proportions of oxygen and nitrogen, underwent 
a change ; and in consequence of this deterioration, no 
doubt, the life of man since the Flood, as we learn 
from history in Genesis, was deranged, and became 
gradually shortened. Another argument he adduces 
against this drift being the remains and wreck of the 
ISToachian Deluge is this, that in the drift there are no 
remains of man found. We should expect, if the drift 
bear the traces of the Deluge, amidst the extinct ani- 
mals and remains of animal life which it contains, to 
find those of man. Man's body, chemically considered, 
is the same as that of the brutes of the earth, only 
finer, and in better and more beautiful proportion. 
But they have not yet found a single trace of man in 
the drifts unless it be said that the arrow-heads, so 
lately talked of, and found in the neighborhood of 
Amiens, are connected with our dynasty. If found in 



ISrO DISPKOOF FROM GEOLOGY. 53 

the drifts they would be evidence that it thus bears 
probable traces of the Noachian Deluge ; and if any 
of the remains of man should be discovered there, so 
far, and only so far, it would neutralize or dispose of 
the argument that Professor Hitchcock adduces against 
the drift being considered as related to the ISToachian 
Deluge. But I must ask you to notice that his is at 
best but a negative argument. No trace of man has 
yet been found in it. This is true : but the investiga- 
tion of the geologist has been limited ; and to-morrow, 
in these days of earnest research, traces may be found. 
It is a negative argument, which subsequent and more 
successful investigation may absolutely and entirely 
dispose of. In the next place, the Professor says 
water appears to have been the principal agent in the 
Noachian Deluge ; but in the product of the drift^ 
ice seems also to have been present. My answer is, 
that the Noachian Deluge is described in the Book 
of Genesis, not as the gradual rise and gradual gentle 
decadence of the Flood. It is spoken of in such lan- 
guage as this, " the fountains of the great deep were 
burst open," " the windows of heaven were broken 
open " — language surely fitted to imply a great con- 
vulsion. And I showed in my last lecture, that there 
are many traces of some great oceanic movement 
from the north to tlie south ; the scoriae and furrows 
upon the stones at Brora, for instance, in Sutherland- 
shire, and in other parts of the kingdom, proving that 
they must have been ground against or marked, and 



54 THE FLOOD — 

impressions left by the rapid and violent passage of 
hard materials, whether ice or stone. The conclusion, 
therefore, to which Professor Sedgwick comes, seems 
to me, taking this last estimate of geologists, the 
most reasonable. Professor Sedgwick, of Cambridge, 
one of the most eminent geologists, says : " If we 
have the clearest proof of great oscillations of the 
sea level, and have a right to make use of them while 
we seek to explain the latest phenomena of geology, 
may we not reasonably suppose that within the pe- 
riod of the human history similar oscillations have 
taken place in those parts of Asia which were the 
cradle of the human race, and ')nay have produced 
that destruction among the early families of men 
lohich is described in our sacred history^ and of which 
so many traditions have been brought down to us 
through all the streams of ancient and authentic his- 
tory ?" This would lead us to infer that the Deluge 
is the last of a series of oscillations of the bed of 
the ocean, not less so because directly from God ; 
and that therefore, so far, taking the view least fa- 
v'orable to Genesis, of geological solutions of the phe- 
nomena of the drifts there is no evidence whatever 
against the fact of the Deluge ; but, on the con- 
trary, in the language of Professor Sedgwick, very 
strong reason for admitting that it must have taken 
place. Hitchcock also concludes, after his elaborate 
discussion, in the following words : " There are no 
facts in geology that afford the least presumption 



NO DISPROOF FROM GEOLOGY. 55 

against tlie occurrence of the Noacliian Deluge, but 
rather the contrary." 

Now, Bishop Colenso says, that when he knew a lit- 
tle of geology, he believed in the historic character of 
the Flood ; but when he knew more of geology, he dis- 
covered it to be an unhistorical and unreliable myth. 
But, according to Professor Sedgwick, the presump- 
tions of all geology are in favor of it ; and, according 
to Professor Hitchcock, " There are no facts in geology 
that afford any presumption against the occurrence of 
tlie ISToachian Deluge, but rather the conti'ary. The 
geologist will admit, that in the elevation and sub- 
sidence of mountains and continents, and in volcanic 
agency generally, of which geology contains so many 
examples, we have an adequate cause for the existence 
of universal deluges; nor can we say how recently these 
causes may have operated beneath certain oceans suffi- 
ciently to produce the Deluge of Scripture. So that," 
he continues, "in geology we have a presumption in 
favor of, rather than an argument against, the exist- 
ence of the Deluge. And some," he adds, " who have 
examined, have thought they have discovered in Asia 
a deposit which can only be referred to the Noachian 
Deluge." 

Now, then, if I take the least favorable evidence fur- 
nished by geology, we find that the Bishop has not one 
inch of solid ground to stand on for his conclusion that 
geology testifies against the Bible. He tells us, the 
more he became acquainted w^ith geology, the more he 



56 THE FLOOD — 

was forced to conclude against Moses. It is evident, 
that if he will only become a much better geologist 
since he has returned to England, he will become a 
more devout believer in the Mosaic record ; and that it 
is not the vast extent of his knowledge of geology, but 
his utter deficiency and ignorance, that have driven 
him to conclude that it testifies against the occurrence 
of that which all antiquity, which Scripture history, 
and varied and manifold traditions throughout the 
whole of heathendom, testify and attest to have actu. 
ally occurred. It is, therefore, the Bishop's geology 
that is at fault; for if Bishop Colenso had believed 
Buckland, and Professor Sedgwick, and Professoi 
Hitchcock, he would have believed in Moses ; but as 
he does not believe in their evidence, how can he be- 
lieve in what Moses records ? 

The next thing I must notice here, is a third ques- 
tion that remains still to be settled, and which I did 
not refer to in my last. Is there reason to believe that 
the Flood was universal ? It is but fair and just to 
admit, that very eminent geologists think that it was 
not. The late Dr. Pye Smith, the very eminent Inde- 
jDendent minister, and a good scholar, concluded that 
the Flood can not have been imiversal, that it only 
covered a little portion of Asia. Professor Hitchcock, 
from whom I have largely quoted — a thoroughly 
Christian man — also believes that the Flood was not 
universal. And the grounds on which he believes it 
are these: the difficulty of finding food for the animals; 



NO DISPEOOF FROM GEOLOGY. 57 

the difficulty of finding water for such a universal Del- 
uge ; and third, the distribution of animals and plants 
throughout the globe, indicates that there must have 
been several centers of creation, from which animals 
radiated so far as climate and food required ; and on 
these three grounds he thinks a universal Deluge im- 
probable. But then, he forgets what we never can 
ignore ; that, if there be reliable proof that God has 
said it was so, that must settle it. Secondly, admit 
that Omnipotence was in the act, and the chief actor 
in the drama, as Moses states, and all difficulties are 
dissolved into air. And, third, accept the Mosaic 
record — which, of course, the Bishop does not — as in- 
spired ; and I think the candid reader of it must infer 
that the Deluge extended wherever man was. If we 
turn, first of all, to the seventh chapter of Genesis, 
where it is recorded, we shall find that the language is 
scarcely compatible with a limited Deluge : " And the 
Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all tliy house 
into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me 
in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt 
take to thee by sevens, the male and his female : and 
of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his 
female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens." And 
then, the fourth verse, — "For yet seven days, and I 
will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and 
forty nights ; and every living substance that I have 
made will I destroy from off the face of the eartli. 

And ISToah did according unto all that the Lord com- 
3* 



58 THE FLOOD — 

manded him. And Xoah was six hundred years old 
when the flood of waters was upon the earth. And 
Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' 
wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of 
the flood." Then it describes the animals that went 
in: and then, in the tenth verse, — "And it came to 
pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were 
upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's 
life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the 
month, the same day were all the fountains of the great 
deep broken up, and the windows of heaven," — or, as 
it is in the margin, — "the floodgates of heaven," — that 
is, of the atmosphere, — " were opened. And the rain 
was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In 
the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, 
and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and 
the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark ; 
they, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle 
after their kind, and every creeping thing that creep- 
eth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after 
his kind, every bird of every sort. And they went in 
unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, 
wherein is the breath of life." Inverse seventeenth, — 
"And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and 
the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was 
lift up above the earth. And the waters prevailed, 
and were increased greatly upon the earth ; and the 
ark went upon the face of the waters. And the wa- 
ters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth ; and all the 



NO DISPEOOF FEOM GEOLOaY. 59 

high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were 
covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters pre- 
vail, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh 
died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of 
cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that 
creepeth upon the earth, and every man ; all in whose 
nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the 
dry land, died. And every living substance was de- 
stroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both 
man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl 
of the heaven ; and they were destroyed from the 
earth; and ^NToah only remained alive, and they that 
were with him in the ark." 

Now, let any plain, unsophisticated man read these 
words, and his conclusion from the record must at least 
be that the Flood was universal. First, the fact that 
the ark settled on Ararat, indicates that the Flood 
must have risen to the height of 17,000 feet. The 
mountain of Ararat is 2,000 feet higher than the mon- 
arch of the Alps. I know it has been argued by some 
that the ark may have settled upon the lower point of 
Ararat ; but it even is very many thousand feet high : 
and when the Word of God says expressly that it set- 
tled on the mountain of Ararat, and all tradition indi- 
cates — and the inhabitants at the base of the mountain 
repeat the tradition — that the ark settled there ; if this 
be maintained, I think a flood that rose 17,000 feet 
above the level of the present sea-mark, or shore-mark, 
must have been very extensive indeed. At all events, 



60 THE FLOOD — 

we are certainly witliin bounds if we infer that the 
Flood must have been coextensive with the crime — for 
it was a judgment inflicted upon criminals for their 
wickedness, — and that wherever man had lived, there 
no living man was left ; wherever the dynasty of man 
was foimd, there the destroying scourge swept, and 
there, so far, the Flood must have been universal. But 
if the discoveries of geology to which I have referred 
be focts indicating the existence of such a deluge, if 
the drift be regarded as any evidence, its universality 
must be proof of the universality of the Flood also. 
But we add, on this subject, geology has nothing to do 
with the Flood of Moses as a fact. The geologist is 
simply to read the stony page, to excavate the interior 
of the globe, to pronoimce on ficts. And it is impor- 
tant you should distinguish, when you hear men quote 
geology against the Scriptures, between the facts that 
geology finds and authenticates, and the fenciful solu- 
tions that geologists sometimes give. A phenomenon, 
or a fact, is what the eye can see and the hand can han- 
dle ; but the d}Tiamic force that carried the flict there 
— is a discussion about which men may entirely differ. 
The first conclusion of geologists was, that the drift 
proved the Flood. If it proved the Flood, it proved 
its universality. The last conclusion of many of them, 
founded on negative points — mind you, the absence of 
man in the drifts and the absence of any trace of hu- 
man civilization also — is that the drift relates to pre- 
Adamite epochs. But the ablest and most accomplish- 



KO DTSPHOOF FROM GEOLOGY. 61 

ed admit, tliat iu it there is notliing presumptive against 
the occurrence of the Noachian Deluge, but, on the 
contrary, much in its favor. And therefore, taking 
this view, and not the other, the Bishop's conclusion, 
that geology disproves the Flood, is altogether untrue. 
The following remarks are entitled to great weight. 

The writers who advocate the theory of a " partial deluge," not 
unfrequently urge, as a .powerful objection to a "universal deluge,'' 
the insufficiency of a natural supply of waters to cover the tops of 
the highest mountains ; and, also somewhat triumphantly, ask what 
h:\s now become of the surplus waters of the Noachic flood ? Not- 
withstanding, when the speculative geologist desires to account foi 
any observed geological phenomena, he rarely hesitates to evoke 
some adequate and startling hypothesis — from his Tartarian depths 
vast mountain-chains arise ; or, perchance, Neptunian floods break 
their "set bounds," and usurp the wide dominion of the hills. 

Mr. Hugh Miller, whose late disquisitions in favor of a " partial 
deluge," are now before the world, tells us in a former publication, 
and we think very justifiably, that by the power of denudation, a de- 
position of the old red-sandstone, full 3,000 feet thick, in the west- 
ern districts of Ross, has been swept away, and gneiss rocks on which 
it rested laid bare. The same gifted writer also affirms that denuda- 
tion, to an extent equally great, has taken place in the Scotch coal- 
field : — " Lunardi," says he, " in his balloon, never reached the 
point, high over Edinburgh, at which, save for the waste of ocean, the 
ooal-seams would at this moment have lain !" And then he asks : — • 

" Who was it scooped these stony waves ? 
Who scalped the brow of Old Cairngorm ? 
And dug these ever-yawning caves ? 
'Twas I, th^ Spirit of the storm." 



62 THE FLOOD— 

We doubt it not ; nor can we likewise fail to perceive that these 

tempest-driven surges of ocean, which so rudely scalped the brow of 
Old Ciurngorm, and avowedly rode rampant hundreds of yards above 
the rocky crests of the highest mountains in Britain, overtopping 
perhaps the silver cone of Ararat, must assuredly have at least been 
those of a Deucalion flood, if not, indeed, a veritable Noachian cata- 
clysm ! And, therefore, we in turn may well demand, whence came 
these aerial floods of the geologist, and to whither are they fled ? 

Especially, we should not be unmindful, that the great Mosaic 
event was a deviation from, or rather a violation of, the ordinary 
laws of nature, and not one of a necessary sequence of events ; that, 
in short, it was effected by the extraordinary interposition of Divine 
power. For the especial accomplishment of His revealed will on 
this awful occasion, ^' the windows of heaven were opened, and the 
fountains of the great deep were broken ;" ^' the waters prevailed ex- 
ceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the 
whole heaven were covered," the turgid turmoil of waters prevail- 
ing, or in other words, collectively continuing their prolonged swxll 
over the face of the globe for a period of upward of 370 days, and 
then, as continually retiring ; or rather hastening before the "wind," 
— which the Creator made to pass over the "earth," — into their *'set 
bounds." And who shall presume to calculate the revolutionizing 
or transposing effects of this mighty inundating advance, and reces- 
sion, of the ocean-waters, under circumstances so peculiar, so ap- 
palling ? Who can confidently affirm that the present wise and beau- 
tiful disposition of sea and land was not, in some considerable de- 
gree at least, then accomplished through the agency of such tremen- 
dous action, and the accompanying signified disruption, depression, 
and elevation of strata ? Inductive science is comparatively silent 
on this point ; it is, in fact, one of nature's hidden mysteries, known 
only to the omnipotent Architect, who " shut up the seas with doors, 
when it brake forth as if it had issued out of the womb." — Holds- 
worth^s Geology and Soils of Ireland^ chapter 8, on "Fossil Re- 
mains of the Elk," eta 



NO DISPKOOF FROM GEOLOGY. 63 

Let me show further where the Bishop's bark still 
carries him. First, it carries him right over Isaiah : 
the ancient prophet, who sinks before its prow, was so 
ignorant of the logic of Bishop Colenso, that he says, 
in his fifty-fonrth chapter and ninth verse, " This is as 
the waters of IsToah." His bark must also ride down 
the prophet Ezekiel, for he says, " Though these three 
men," these three tnen^ not myths — if he had said 
'inyths^ I would not have quoted it ; but, " Though 
these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job." In the 
third place, St. Paul disappears in this tempestuous 
ocean, over which this episcopal bark rides so trium- 
phantly ; for St. Paul was so ignorant as positively to 
assert, in Hebrews x.i., " ISToah, being warned of God 
of things not yet seen, moved with fear" — you never 
heard of a myth being moved with fear, or a figure oi 
speech being alarmed — " moved with fear, prepared an 
ark ;" there is an historic statement — " to the saving oi 
his house." And Peter also disappears in the flood 
on which the Bishop sails with so great confidence, 
for he was so ignorant and unenlightened as to say, 
"Which sometime were disobedient, when once the 
long-suffering of God waited, in the days of Noah, 
while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, 
eight souls were saved by water." Now then, if the 
Deluge be not a fact, how does the Bishop vindicate 
the veracity, or accept the inspiration, or rely on the 
writings of Isaiah, of Ezekiel, of St. Paul, and of St. 
Peter ? One or other alternative is certain, and on 



6-i THE FLOOD — 

the one or the otlicr horn of the dilemma I impale 
Bishop Colenso ; either Paul, Peter, Ezekiel, Isaiah, 
were deceivers, and have deceived us, or they were 

deceived themselves, and are not inspired ; or Bishop 
Colenso is a rash, unreliable, indiscreet, and misguided 
Bishop. And if such be the conclusion to which we 
come, then, I say, instead of being the captain of a 
large ship, careering on the waters in triumjA, and 
riding do^vn all small crafts that come m its way — 
whether apostles, prophets, or evangelists — he is not 
fit to be the skipper of the smallest boat on the small- 
est millpond in England. 

The inference is irresistible, that the Bishop, if right, 
can not remain where he is. Consistency demands that 
he should at once disavow Christianity, and say — which 
will be honest, and upright, and straightforward, " I 
have been deceived ; I have discovered from geology 
that Moses is neither truthful nor inspired." But, mark 
you, if Peter and Paul were mistaken about facts, may 
they not be altogether misled about doctrines? If 
they believe that the ark of Xoah was a fact, but are 
in error, may they not be mistaken in believing that 
the cross of Christ was raised on a Judean hill, or that 
it bore the grand Victim, who has bequeathed to us 
a glorious sacrifice in which the hearts of millions find 
anchorage, and ride securely amid the storms and 
tempests of this present world ? But the Bishop goes 
farther. He who lived as never man lived — He who 
spake as never man spake, has given a very different 



NO DISPROOF FROM GEOLOGY. 65 

judgment from that of His professed teacher, minister, 
and disciple ; for in the 1 7th chapter of the Gospel ac- 
cording to St. Luke — not Isaiah, not Paul, not Peter, 
not Ezekiel, but the great Lord and Master of them all 
says — " And as it was in the days of ISToah, so shall it 
be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, 
they drank, they married wives, they were given in 
marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, 
and the flood came, and destroyed them all." Did not 
the Saviour evidently believe in Noah as a person? 
Does Lie not quote the historic incident of the Flood as 
a fact ? — and does He not make that fact the foundation 
of a prophecy the most magnificent, of issues the most 
weighty and important ? The question is not, does the 
Bishop believe in Moses? — which he does not; but, 
does he believe in Christ ? I can't see how, if he reject 
Moses, he can hesitate one single moment in rejecting, 
not merely the ancient servant, Moses, but the blessed 
Master, Christ, also. Christianity is the most liberal 
faith that ever dawned upon the intelligence of man ; 
but Bishop Colenso's is the most latitudinarian. It is 
one thing to be liberal, it is a totally different thing to 
be latitudinarian. I am so liberal, that I believe there 
are Christians in every communion upon earth, and thou- 
sands even in the Church of Rome ; but I am not so 
latitudinarian as to believe that Isaiah was mistaken, 
that Paul was deceived ; that Peter was deluded, and 
that the Prince of peace has quoted as a fact, what was 
only a fancy embosomed in tradition, and appealed to 



66 THE FLOOD — 

books, as part of tlie rule of faith, whicli have no histori- 
cal value whatever. 

I would, in conclusion, draw two or three useful les- 
sons from the whole. First, where science seems to 
come into collision with religion — remember the col- 
lision is only seeming. Before these lectures are con- 
cluded I will bring forward the many instances in 
Scripture in which the writer does not profess to teach 
science, but where the reference that he makes covers 
the most splendid discoveries of science. I will show 
that whilst Scripture was not written to teach geology, 
or astronomy, or chemistry, or geography; yet wher- 
ever the sacred penman touches on a natural phenom- 
enon, he uses language that covers the most splendid 
discoveries of modern science. And then, in the second 
place, remember this, that the Bible rests upon its own 
evidence ; geology rests upon its evidence. When the 
two, as I have said, seem to come into collision, do not 
forget that you have already proved the Bible to be 
God's Word, upon distinct and independent evidence, 
and you have laid aside that conclusion as a fact in 
your memory, a conviction in your heart, not to be sub- 
verted or swept away by evidence relating to science. 
Therefore, when you see the two come seemingly into 
collision, say, " I am satisfied that what is in the Bible 
is true upon its own distinct and peculiar evidence; 
and I am convinced that, if there be opposition between 
the phenomenon you quote, and the text I believe, it is 
because you do not see the phenomenon clearly, or 



KG DISPROOF FROM GEOLOGY. 67 

have not apprehended it correctly ; by and by, when 
you have extended the area of your induction, and are 
more enlightened through larger experience, we will 
talk about this collision." The evidence is undeniable 
that the first impressions of geology were all quoted 
as being antagonistic to Scripture ; and that the ripest 
conclusions of the rijDCSt scholars are now quoted as 
proving nothing against ScrijDture, but very much in 
harmony with it. 

The Record quotes these judicious remarks from the 
"Boyle Lectures" of 1861 : 

When objections are urged against any given portion of the evan- 
gelical histories, on the ground of discrepancies between them, it 
must be proved that these discrepancies forbid the possibility of both 
accounts being equally true. If the objection does not prove this, it 
proves nothing. . . . Against this '' can not" of the infidel stands the 
^'may" of the Christian. We need nothing more than this for the 
necessities of our position. The assertion of the evidences is that 
revelation " is" true ; the objection of the infidel is that it "can not" 
be true ; the rejoinder of the Christian that it " can " or " may." 
Thus a hundred different modes may be suggested of reconciling 
the Mosaic account of the creation with the results of science. It is 
immaterial to the Christian position to decide which of these is true ; 
it is enough that they are possible. — The Bible and its Critics^ p. 128. 

The Flood illustrates a very important fact. 

It is a standing and lasting proof of a moral Gover- 
nor of the earth. God interposed when the sin of man 
had become ripe, and showed that the sinners sin 
shall find him out. It was a judicial act inflicted by 



C8 THE FLOOD — 

the Judge of all the earth, and at a period when there 
was no written revelation. Bishop Colenso says he 
trusts to the inner light of his own mind, though he 
may have shattered the whole of external revealed re- 
ligion. But the antediluvians for tw^o thousand years 
had this inner light ; they had no written Scripture ; 
and from Adam to Noah there must have been only 
three links. Adam in all probability talked with the 
young boy Methuselah, and the old man Methuselah 
probably talked with the yomig man ISToah ; so that 
the traditions of the truth taught in Paradise might be 
transmitted with the least risk of being shipwa-ecked — 
yet so little had the inner light saved man from the 
consequences of his own corruption, that at the time of 
the Flood all flesh had corrupted its way, and every 
imagination of the thoughts of the heart of man was 
only evil continually. 

The great lesson that Christendom has learnt from 
the Flood is, after all, the precious, the personal, the 
l^ractical; as the largest ships sank like lead in the 
mighty w^aters, and the highest hills w^ere overflow^ed, 
and the strongest castles were swept away, as straw 
and straw huts before the Flood, and there Avas safety 
for Noah and his only in the ark — so now there is 
but one name under heaven given among men, where- 
by ye can be saved ; there is but one refuge for the 
youngest, the oldest, the w^orst, and the wickedest ol 
mankind. In Christ there is room for all the millions 
of Christendom ; out of Christ there is no present real 



NO DISPEOOF FROM GEOLOGY. 69 

peace — there is no eternal blessedness for the best that 
lives. Have you lied to that Refuge ? Are you found 
in Him, not having your own righteousness, but His ? 
If so, just as when the ark careered on the tempestuous 
billows, when the rain-drops pattered on the roof, and 
it rocked upon the surging waves, Noah felt secure, 
not because the ark was strong, but because the promise 
of his God was sure; — so you, being found in Christ, 
neither length, nor breadth, nor height, nor depth, nor 
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor any other 
creature, shall be able to separate from Christ Jesus, 
And as these floods bore the ark in safety till it rested 
on the mountains of Ararat, leaving Noah to begin the 
weary march and the carking work of life again, our 
Ark, this blessed Ark, built in heaven, will bear you 
across the floods of time, and in the teeth of the storms 
of this world, notwithstanding reefs, and shoals, and 
rocks ; and land you, not on the barren mountains ol 
Ararat, to look forth upon a depopulated and dis- 
mantled world, but upon the everlasting hills of the 
heavenly Jerusalem ! 



CHAPTER IT. 

THE bishop's arithmetic AT FAULT. 

I PEOCEED to investigate the proofs, as thev are 
called, that the Scripture is not inspired, that it is not 
profitable, and that through it the man of God can not 
be thoroughly fiimished imto ererv good work. It 
may certainly be asked, TVhy should the writing of an 
individual bishop, however excellent or learned, be 
made the subject of protracted investigation? The 
answer is, whatever touches the Bible touches the ark 
of the Lord. Our hopes for the future are in it ; our 
convictions are drawn from it ; it is our guide to duty, 
and our encouragement to persevere ; and all our hopes 
respecting them that are gone are here also. Take 
from us the Bible, you shut up the fountain of refi'esh- 
ing waters ; you extinguish the light to our feet and 
the lamp to our path ; you take away onr chart, our 
compass, and we are drifting on a stormy sea, without 
a hope or a haven. It may be suggested, that such a 
writer will not be noticed by the multitude. His book 
is being read by thousands of the young; the infidel is 
glorying in it ; those who are not convinced find in it 
reasons for resigning the little fragment of hope that 
was in them. Because of this, and not only this, but 
because the objections he flings against the great his- 



THE bishop's AKITHMETIC AT FAULT. 71 

toric facts of Genesis give ns an opportunity of vindi- 
cating their truth, and showing how sound and consist- 
ent in all its details the Word of God is, I answer his 
book. 

There are, unquestionably, existing contradictions, 
if I may call them so, between, for instance, the books 
of Chronicles and the books of Kings, in a few mis- 
prints of numbers. For instance, in 1 Kings iv. 26, 
Solomon's stalls of horses are spoken of as forty thou- 
sand ; in 2 Chronicles ix. 25, they are given as four 
thousand. Seven thousand chariots of the Ammonites 
were destroyed by David, according to 1 Chronicles 
xix. 18 ; only seven hundred were destroyed, according 
to 2 Samuel x. 18. Again, fifty thousand and seventy 
of the men of Beth-shemesh were destroyed for looking 
into the ark, in 1 Samuel vi. 19 ; in the Syriac version, 
the number is given as only five thousand and seventy. 
In these there is transparently an incidental insertion 
or omission of a point. In every instance the difference 
IS thousands. For instance, in one it is seven thousand ; 
in another it is reduced to seven hundred. In one it is 
fifty thousand and seventy men ; in another it is five 
thousand and seventy men. In one book it is forty 
thousand stalls of horses ; in another it is four thousand. 
The similarity of the figures — thousands are put down 
instead of tens of thousands — indicating that there 
must have been some omission of a distinctive mark in 
the one book, or insertion of it in the other ; and there- 
fore that one or other must necessarily be what we 



72 THE bishop's arithmetic 

Avould call in modern phrase a misprint ; namely, it is 
either four thousand or forty thousand ; it is either fifty 
thousand and seventy or five thousand and seventy ; it 
is either seven thousand or seven hundred ; God has 
not guaranteed that every copyist of a MS. shall be in- 
fallible, nor that every printer shall be so. In arith- 
metical numbers, the omission of a single point, just as 
in our Arabic numerals the omission of a cipher makes 
the difference between thousands and hundreds, or be- 
tween hundreds and tens ; so in one book of Scripture 
there has been omitted a numeral found in another ; or 
in one book has been added what is not found in the 
other. But should it be asked. How, then, can we get 
at truth ? I answer, the correction is in our hands. 
Ancient MSS., ancient translations, the earliest and the 
greatest number, must and do settle what is genuine. 
Likewise, a searching analysis of the whole story will 
evolve the number that must be correct. The one 
book forms the correction of the other. But, suppose 
the books of the Bible had been written by a person 
deliberately designing to palm upon the world an im- 
posture, do you think he would have allowed an arith- 
metical contradiction to occur ? If a person is wiiting 
a work which he knows to be false, but which he wish- 
es to be believed to be true, he takes care not to say 
two and two make five in one passage, while two and 
two make four in the corresponding passage. Such 
errors never would, in such a cas'3, be alloAved. The 
very fact, that in one or two instances numbers vary, 



AT FAULT. 73 

shows that they must have crept in by the incidental 
carelessness of copyists, and their occurrence is indirect 
proof that there was no conspiracy to palm a romance, 
or a tale, or a fable, upon the church, and upon man- 
kind. 

In a paper well known — the Athenceum — is a letter 
of immense value from one of the best known and most 
reliable of travelers in modern times — I mean Mr. J. 
L. Porter, who has visited and carefully explored the 
very scenes about which Bishop Colenso speaks. He 
says : — 

" Of late, I have frequently heard the remark made 
by thoughtful men, that many of the replies to Bishop 
Golenso on the Pentateuch, are calculated to do more 
harm than good. It strikes me this is the case with 
the letter which appears in your last number. Your 
correspondent affirms that the Bishop 'has demonstrat- 
ed a consistency in error pervading every part of the 
Exodus narrative, which absolutely forbids our accept- 
ing its arithmetic in the form in which it is now pre- 
sented to us ;' but he avoids the conclusion that ' the 
narrative is therefore unhistorical and uninspired^'' by 
a theory which, though certainly ingenious, receives no 
support from the Bible or from the history of the He- 
brew text. It would have been well had both he and 
Bishop Colenso examined the Scripture passages, and 
the facts and numbers recorded in them, with a little 
more attention, ere they charged them witli error. I 
have no hesitation in affirming that a sound and search- 



74 THE bishop's arithmetic 

ing criticism will be found triumphantly to establish 
the authenticity of the whole Pentateuch, in spite of 
all the arithmetic of Bishop Colenso. Your correspon- 
dent instances three points in the sacred narrative 
which the Bishop has proved to be positively and palpa- 
bly erroneous. Truth and justice demand that we 
give them a full and fair examination before we agree 
with him. The first point is, ' the improbability, not 
to say impossibility^ of seventy souls multiplying in the 
course of 215 years into a population of about or over 
two millions.' I maintain that there is no impossibility 
here ; and I also maintain that there can be no error 
in the numbers, because the whole tenor of the narra- 
tive leads us to expect an enormous increase. Let us 
look at a few facts. We are told that a special bless- 
ing of vast increase of his seed was repeatedly prom- 
ised to Abraham (Gen. xii. 2 ; xv. 5 ; xvii. 6 ; xxii. lY), 
and renewed to Isaac (xxv. 23), and Jacob (xxviii. 14 ; 
xxxii. 12; xlvi. 3). We are told that this blessing 
rested specially on the Israelites in Egypt (Exodus i. 
7). We are told that 'Joseph saw Ephraim's children 
of the third generation ; the children also of Machir, 
the son of Manasseh, were brought up upon Joseph's 
knees' (Gen. 1. 23). Joseph was about 34 years old 
when his sons were born (Gen. xli. 46-50), and he died 
aged 1 10 (1. 26). Hence it folloAvs that in this instance 
the fourth generation was born, and four generations 
loere alive together^ only seventy-five years after the 
descent into Egypt. We are told (1 Chron. vii. 22-27) 



AT FAULT. 75 

that Joshua was the tenth in descent from Joseph; 
that is, there were ten generations within the 215 years' 
residence in Egypt. Again, Nahshon, Avho was prince 
of the tribe of Judah at the exodus, was of the sixth 
generation, and not through the line of eldest sons (1 
Chron. ii. 3-10). We have many incidental proofs 
that the Israelites married very young, and that three 
and four generations were often alive together (Num. 
ii. 18 ; Exod. xvii. 8-16). These facts prepare the way 
for a true estimate of the Israelites at the exodus. We 
are not to form our estimate according to what is 
probable or usual under ordinary circumstances, but 
according to what is possible under such extraordinary 
circumstances. IsTow, suppose that the Israelites re- 
mained in Egypt only 215 years: this will give seven 
generations of nearly thirty-one years each. Suppose 
that each man had, on an average, four sons at the age 
of thirty ; Benjamin had ten before that age. SujDpose, 
further, the number of the males who went down, and 
afterward became fathers, to be sixty-seven. Calculat- 
ing upon these data, the number of souls at the exodus 
would amount to 2,195,456. And this does not include 
the descendants of Jacob's servants, who were doubt- 
less numerous ; nor does it take into account addition- 
al children born after the father attained the age of 
thirty, nor the more rapid increase of those born before 
that age. In many cases besides that of Joshua there 
may have been ten generations instead of seven. Bishop 
Colenso can not deny that this is possible^ nor can he 



76 THE bishop's arithmetic 

deny that the whole tenor of the narrative warrant-s us 
in supposing an enormous and even unparalleled in- 
crease." So that the Bishoj^'s arithmetic is totally at 
fault in his calculation. 

" The second pointy'''' says Mr. Porter, " supposed to 
' demonstrate ' an error in the sacred narrative, is the 
estimated size of the camp in the wilderness, — ' not 
much inferior, in compass, we must suppose, to Lon- 
don.' It is assumed that the whole two millions of 
people were grouped close together in a camp. This 
is opposed alike to the whole tenor of the narrative 
and to common sense. Any one Avho has had an 
opportunity of visiting the great Arab tribes of the 
Syrian desert can see that the Bishop's difficulties are 
here j)urely imaginary. The Israelites had immense 
flocks and herds (Exod. xii. 38) ; these, from the ne- 
cessity of the case, and like the flocks of the modern 
Bedouin, were scattered far and wide over the penin- 
sula, and probably over the plain northwards. On 
one occasion I rode for two successive days in a 
straight line through the flocks of a section of the 
Anazeh tribe, and the encampment of the chief was 
then at a noted fountain, thirty miles distant, at right 
angles to my course ; yet the country was swarming 
with men and women, boys and girls, looking after 
the cattle. In like manner the great bulk of the Is- 
raelites would be scattered over the desert. The 
camp would thus be a mere nucleus ; large, no doubt, 
but not approaching the exaggerated estimate of 



AT FAULT. 77 

Bishop Colenso. Yet, being the head-quarters of 
the nation, containing the tabernacle, the priests, and 
the chiefs, and forming the rallying point for the war- 
riors, it was the only place with which the sacred 
historian was concerned. This view, which is natural, 
scriptural, and in accordance with the universal prac- 
tice of Oriental nomads, sweeps away a host of diffi- 
culties conjured up by the imagination, and then sup- 
ported by the arithmetic of Bishop Colenso." 

The Bishop, you observe, has assumed that the 
camp, instead of being the palatial and sacred resi- 
dence of the chiefs, was the great encampment of the 
Avhole two millions and upwards in the desert. He 
has, therefore, been w^holly misled in his arithmetic. 
Had he studied arithmetic much more he would have 
blundered in theology much less. The third point 
noticed by this writer is more important still ; and I 
read it because it is the testimony of one who has 
been upon the very spots that are in discussion, and 
who is competent to give an opinion. " ' The climax 
of inconsistency between facts and figures is reached, 
wlien we come to the notice by the Lord to Israel, 
contained in Exod. xxiii. 29, " I will not drive them 
(the nations of Canaan) out from before thee in one 
year, lest the land become desolate^ and the beast of the 
field multiply against thee^^ and are reminded that by 
the present numbers (without reckoning the aboriginal 
Canaanites, " seven nations greater and mightier" than 
Israel itself), Canaan would be as thickly peopled as 



78 THE bishop's akithmetic 

tlie counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, at the 
present day. It is impossible not to see that on the 
very face of the narrative a population is pre-supposed 
Avidely at variance with the numbers at present exist- 
ing in the text.' It was with no little astonishment 
I found such an acute writer indorsing this argument 
of Bishop Colenso. The argument is, the Israelites 
numbered tioo millions^ Canaan contained only 11,000 
square miles. To suppose that with such a popula- 
tion the land could become desolate, or the beast of 
the field multiply, is absurd. It is further stated, by 
way of illustration and proof, that Natal contains 
18,000 square miles, and only 150,000 souls, yet most 
of the wild beasts have been exterminated. Here is 
at once the greatest and most inexcusable blunder in 
the Bishop's whole book. He takes his estimate of 
the size of the land from Dr. Kitto, and it is accurate, 
so far as concerns the portion divided among the tribes 
by Joshua^ but that is not the land referred to in Exod. 
xxiii. 29. Had he looked at verse 31 of that chapter 
he might have been saved from a blunder, of which he 
may well feel ashamed. The boundaries of the land 
alluded to are there given : ' Prom the Red Sea unto 
the sea of the Philistines^ and from the desert unto the 
river,^ They Avere defined before, in the promise to 
Abraham (Gen. xv. 18) — ^ Prom the river of Egypt 
unto the great river^ the river Euphrates? That land 
is 500 miles long, by 100 broad, and contains about 
50,000 square miles : or nearly five times Bishop Co- 



AT FAULT. 79 

lenso's estimate ! Further, the population of that 
country, at the present moment, is about two millions, 
or about equal to the number of the Israelites at the 
exodus ; and I can testify that more than three-fourths 
of the richest and the best of the country lies completely 
desolate. The vast plains of Moab and Esdraelon, and 
the whole valley of the Jordan, are without an inhab- 
itant. In the plains of Philistia, Sharon, Bashan, Coe- 
losyria, and Hamath not one-tenth of the soil is under 
cultivation. In one section of Bashan I saw upwards 
of seventy deserted towns and villages. Bishop Colen- 
so says that though the population of Natal is so small, 
jnost of the wild beasts have long ago disappeared, 
and the inhabitants are perfectly well able to maintain 
their ground against the rest. He forgets, however, 
to thank gunpowder and the rifle for this. Had the 
people of Natal contended against the wild beasts as 
the ancient Jews did, with spears, and arrows, and 
slings ; had the chiefs of the colony been forced to fight 
African lions as David fought the lion that attacked 
his sheep, when he caught him by the beard, and smote 
him and slew him (1 Sam. xvii. 34), the Bishop would 
have had a different tale to tell this day. Many of the 
wild beasts have disappeared from Syria, but many 
still infest the country. In the plain of Damascus wild 
swine commit great ravages on the grain. This is the 
case along the banks of the Jordan and in other places. 
On the sides of Anti-Lebanon I have known the bears 
to destroy whole vineyards in a single night. When 



80 THE bishop's arithmetic 

traveling through some districts of the country my 
tent was surrounded every night by troops of jackals 
and hyenas, and more than once they have left me 
without a breakfast. With my own eyes I have seen 
jackals dragging corpses from the graves beneath the 
very walls of Jerusalem. Were it not that the peas- 
ants are pretty generally armed with rifles, the grain 
crops and vineyards in many parts of Sp'ia would be 
completely destroyed by wild beasts. 

" The public will now see how very little Bishop 
Colenso knows of Bible lands, and how wise and 
good was the Divine promise, ' I will not drive them 
out from before thee in one year, lest the land become 
desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against 
thee.' " 

Nothing can be more crushing than the personal 
testimony of so competent an historian, who speaks, 
not from argument, but from personal visits to the 
spots that the Bishop refers to ; and nothing can be 
more complete than the exposure of the gross blunder 
which the Bishop has perjDetrated in supposing that a 
land of 11,000 square miles was referred to, when, if 
he had opened his Bible, and read on in the very pas- 
sag:e on which he was making^ such hostile criti- 
cisms, he would have discovered that instead of being 
11,000, it was 50,000, or nearly five times the amount 
in area. 

I proceed to notice another point where the Bishop 
really is guilty of a grievous misquotation of the very 



AT FAULT. 81 

words of Scripture. At page 17 of his book, lie com- 
23lains of a passage, Genesis xlvi. 12, which he thus 
quotes, "And the sons of Judah, Er, and Onan, and 
Shelah, and Pharez, and Zarah ; but Er and Onan died in 
the land of Canaan; and the sons of Pharez, Hezron, 
and Hamul." What he says here is, " It appears to me 
to be certain, that the writer here means to say that 
Hezron and Hamul were horn in the land of Canaan^ 
and were among the seventy persons (including Jacob 
himself, and Joseph, and his two sons) who came into 
Egypt with Jacoh^ But, he argues, this can not be. 
" Judah ^YSisfort]/-t^oo years old, according to the story, 
when he went down with Jacob into Egypt ;" and dur- 
ing these forty-two years, according to this statement, 
he must have grown up, he must have married, his 
eldest son must have married, and had children ; he 
must have, therefore, had children, and probably grand- 
children : and that Hezron and Hamul were of these. 
The Bishop reads the passage, " And the sons of Pharez, 
Hezron, and Hamul," as if these were sons that were 
born in the land of Canaan. But if you turn to the 
passage, the reading is not what he alleges. It occurs 
in the forty-sixth chapter of Genesis, at tlie twelfth 
verse, where you will find these words : " And the sons 
of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and 
Zarah ; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan." 
Now, there is a full stop in my Bible at " the land of 
Canaan." In the Bishop's quotation there is only a 
semi-colon. What business had he to alter punctuation 



82 THE bishop's arithmetic 

without a reason of any sort assigned for it ? Then lie 
says, " and the sons of Pharez, Hezron, and Hamul." 
He links them with the rest that were born to Judah 
and his sons. But in the Bible it begins a new sen- 
tence, " And the sons of Pharez were Hezron and Ha- 
mul." It does not describe them as sons there born, it 
is simply a new sentence, which the Bishop, almost 
with Popish ingenuity, alters and mutilates, because it 
seems to serve a point in his argument. Now, assum- 
ing that marriages took place, as we know they did, in 
eastern climes, at a very early date, the whole account, 
read as the Bible gives it, not as the Bishop mutilates 
it, is not only just and true, but perfectly probable and 
credible. 

The next thing the Bishop discusses is the size of the 
tabernacle, and its unhistorical associations. His ar- 
gument is at page 31 of his book. He quotes the 
words, " And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Gather 
thou all the congregation together unto the door of the 
tabernacle of the congregation. And Moses did as 
Jehovah commanded him. And the assembly was 
gathered together unto the door of the tabernacle of 
the congregation." The Bishop argues, it is impossi- 
ble that the whole body of the people could have been 
thus gathered. He says, " First, it appears to be cer- 
tain that, by the expressions used so often, here and 
elsewhere, ' the assembly,' ' the whole assembly,' ' all 
the congregation,' is meant the whole body of the peo- 
ple — at all events, the adult males in the prime of life 



AT FAULT. 83 

among them — and not merely the elders or heads of the 
people^ as some have supjDosed, in order to escape from 
such difficulties as that which we are now about to con- 
sider. At any rate, I can not, with due regard to the 
truth, allow myself to believe, or attempt to persuade 
others to believe, that such expressions as the above 
can possibly be meant to be understood of the elders 
only." Then he says, '' Now the whole width of the 
tabernacle was 10 cubits or 18 feet, reckoning the cubit 
at 1.824 feet (see Bagsterh Bihle)^ and its length was 
30 cubits, or 54 feet, as maybe gathered from Ex. xxvi. 
Allowing two feet in width for each full-grown man, 
nine men could just have stood in front of it. Suppos- 
ing, then, that all the congregation of adult males in 
the prime of life had given due heed to the divine sum- 
mons, and had hastened to take their stand, side by 
side, as closely as possible, in front, not merely of the 
door^ but of the whole end of the tabernacle, in which 
the door was, they would have reached, allowing 18 
inches between each rank of nine men, for a distance of 
more than 100,000 feet — in fact, nearly twenty miles. 
It is inconceivable how, under such circumstances, ' all 
the assembly,' the 'whole congregation,' could have 
been summoned to attend 'at the door of the taberna- 
cle,' by the express command of Almighty God." 
Such is the Bishop's arithmetic. He calculates the size 
of the door of the tabernacle, he counts the number 
summoned to assemble at it ; he then asks, " IIoav could 
Buch a vast mass of men have stood within a very small 



81 THE bishop's arithmetic 

space indeed?" They must have occupied twenty 
miles ; how could they be compressed into an area a 
few yards square ? The answer we give is, that if the 
writer of the book had meant to deceive, he never 
would have committed the palpable blunder of assert- 
ing that hundreds of thousands of men were compress- 
ed into an area 82 feet by 42. But the Bishop, long 
resident among African Zulus, has forgotten what is 
called the usics loquendi^ or the custom of speech in 
modern times. We read, not many years ago, that the 
Russians had invaded Turkey ; — What ! the Bishop 
would exclaim, do you mean to say that the sixty mil- 
lions of people that belong to Russia can all be con- 
tained within the small space of Turkey in Europe ? 
The thing is impossible, incredible, and therefore, un- 
historical. But every sane Englishman understands, 
the phrase, and has not a single doubt about its truth. 
I read in the newspaper that the House of Commons, 
last year, was summoned to the bar of the House of 
Lords, and they duly attended. Suppose Bishop Co- 
lenso were to hear of it, he would exclaim, What au 
outrage uj)on common sense ! How could 600 men, 
constituting the House of Commons, find room to stand 
at the bar of the House of Lords, where there is posi- 
tively room for some fifty or sixty men only ? The 
Times newspaper, therefore, must have stated a false, 
hood ; the House of Commons never could have met 
at the bar of the House of Lords ; the thing is incredi- 
ble and impossible. And yet every s.^ne reader kiiows 



AT FAULT. 85 

it is credible, and strictly true. Alison, the eminent 
historian, says, that when the great captain of a former 
centmy, ISTapoleon, had assembled his brilliant troops 
around the pyramids of Egypt, amounting to some 
30,000 men, in one of those lightning addresses that he 
made, he said, " Forty centuries, my soldiers, are look- 
ing down upon you from these pyramids." He so 
addressed his army, consisting, as we have said, of 
30,000 men. But the Bishop would argue. How could 
30,000 men have heard IS'apoleon's voice, which was 
not very strong? we know, as matter of statistics, that 
the human voice, in the open air, won't reach ovei 
4000 men. But we believe that Alison was right, and 
that the Bishop is quibbling. The language that ap- 
plies to the House of Lords, to the invasion of a nation, 
to the address of a commander to his army, is similarly 
applied in Scripture, for Scripture speaks according to 
the usages and customs of mankind, and not according 
to the hard arithmetical calculations of this most 
crotchety Bishop. 

I proceed to another statement of the Bishop. He 
quotes Leviticus iv. 11 ; "And the skin of the bullock, 
and all his flesh, with his head, and with his legs, and 
his inwards, and his dung, even the whole bullock, shall 
he (the priest) carry forth without the camp, unto a 
clean place." I must remind you, that Mr. Porter says, 
the camp, instead of being twelve miles square, as the 
Bishop contends, was a mere central spot, like a palace 
in the midst of a capital. But the Bishop says, "The 



bb THE BISHOP S AKITHMETIC 

oftal of these sacrifices would have had to be carried by 
Aaron himself, or one of his sons, a distance of six 
miles. In fact, we have to imagine the priest having 
himself to carry, on his back on foot, from St. Paul's 
to the outskirts of the metropolis, the skin, and flesh, 
and head, and legs, and inwards, and dung, even the 
whole bullock, and the people having to carry out their 
rubbish in like manner, and brmg in their daily sup- 
plies of water and fuel, after first cutting down the lat- 
ter where they could find it! Further, w^e have to 
imagine half a million of men going out daily — the 
22,000 Levites for a distance of six miles — to the 
suburbs for the common necessities of nature! The 
supposition involves of course an absurdity." My first 
reply is, that the camp, instead of being twelve miles 
square, or six miles from the center on each side, was 
probably not a single mile. That alone would be an 
extinguishing answ^er. But still it would be said. How 
could the priest, a man, carry a bullock on his back, 
outside the camp, to a clean place, any distance ? The 
answer is given by the Rev. Mr. M'Caul, a clergyman 
of the Church of England, in London, who shows that 
the Hebrew verb, " shall carry out," is vehotzi, Li 
the Hebrew, there is a conjugation called the Hiphil, or 
causative conjugation ; and this word vehotzi is in the 
causative, or the Hiphil conjugation ; and the meaning 
of it therefore is, " he shall cause to be carried out." 
Surely, the Bishop did not study his Hebrew grammar, 
or open a Hebrew lexicon ; if he had, he would have 



AT FAULT. 87 

been saved perpetrating so gross a blunder. But sup- 
pose the Bishop had not looked into a Hebrew lexicon, 
or a Hebrew grammar, but had examined parallel pas- 
sages in our version, he would have found how absurd 
is the interpretation he puts upon it. I take, for in- 
stance, Leviticus xxiv. 13 ; "And the Lord spake unto 
Moses, saying, Bring forth him that hath cursed." 
Here is an order to Moses to bring forth him that 
cursed. ISTow read verse 23, that follows; "And 
Moses spake to the children of Israel, that they should 
bring forth him that had cursed out of the camp, and 
stone him with stones. And the children of Israel did 
as the Lord commanded Moses." The command was 
given to the high priest not personally to carry forth 
the bullock, but that he should cause to be done what 
God commanded him. We say of the Duke of Wel- 
lington, he beat the French at Waterloo. Bishop Co- 
lenso would say. How was it possible this single indi- 
vidual, the Duke of Wellington, could have beaten the 
Avhole French army at Waterloo ? The answer is, he 
did it through the instrumentality of his troops. In 
the same manner the high priest was commanded to 
carry out the bullock. How could a single man bear 
such an enormous weight upon his shoulders, unless he 
were an Atlas ? The answer is, that the Hebrew verb 
is in the Hiphil, or causative conjugation, and that he 
was to cause to be done what he was commanded to do ; 
just as when the Lord commanded Moses to take forth 
him tliat cursed, and kill him, the Israelites did it^ 



88 THE bishop's akithmetic 

and qui facit per allmn facit per se^ " lie that does a 
thing by another does it himself." 

The next passage that the Bishop quarrels with, is 
in Deuteronomy viii. 15 ; which he quotes to prove 
that there was no water in the wilderness. Now, this 
is one of the most inexcusable blunders, I think, in 
the whole of the Bishop's book ; and I quote this, to 
show you how utterly baseless are his assaults, and 
how completely recoil all the Aveapons that he levels 
against the fortress of Divine truth. I turn to Deute- 
ronomy viii. 15, and I find it as follows; "Who led 
thee through that great and terrible wilderness, where- 
in were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, 
where there was no water ;" the Bishop stops here. 
I have noticed that a Roman Catholic priest in discus- 
sion, when he quotes a text for one thing, always 
leaves out w^hat proves that it means the opposite. 
It is invariably so. Xow the Bishop quotes this text, 
just as far as suits his critical convictions, and closes 
it at the words " wherein was no water." But the 
very next clause is, " Who brought thee forth water 
out of the rock of flint." Why does he omit that ? 
Because it would not suit his purpose. Is this fair ? 
Is it ordinary literary honesty, or common Christian 
integrity, to quote a text to prove one thing, when, if 
he w^ould read on, it will be found to prove precisely 
the other thing ? 

He refers, at page 122, to the sacrifices that were 
ofiered in the desert. He says, " The book of Le- 



AT FAULT. 89 

viticus is chiefly occupied in giving directions to the 
priests for the proper discharge of the different duties 
of their office, and further directions are given in the 
book of Numbers. And now let us ask, for all these 
multifarious duties," that he quotes connected with 
sacrifices, " during the forty years' sojourn in the wil- 
derness ; for all the burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, 
peace-offerings, sin-offerings, trespass-offerings, thank- 
offerings, etc., of a population like that of the city of 
London, besides the daily and extraordinary sacrifices 
— how many priests were there ? The answer is very 
simple, there were only thre^ — Aaron (till his death), 
and his two sons, Eleazar and Ithamar. And it is 
laid down very solemnly in Numbers iii. 10, 'Thou 
shalt appoint Aaron and his sons, and they shall wait 
in the priest's office ; and the stranger^ that cometh 
nigh^ shall he put to death!* So again, verse 38, 
' Aaron and his sons, keeping the charge of the sanc- 
tuary, for the charge of the children of Israel ; and 
the stranger that cometh nigh shall he put to death! 
Yet, how was it possible, that these two or three men 
should have discharged all these duties for such a vast 
multitude ? The single work of offering the double 
sacrifice for Avomen after childbirth, must have utterly 
overpowered three priests, though engaged without 
cessation from morning to night. As we have seen 
(74), the births among two millions of people may 
be reckoned as, at least, 250 a day ; for which, conse- 
quently, 500 sacrifices (250 burnt-offerings and 250 



90 THE bishop's arithmetic 

sin-offerings), would have had to be offered daily. 
Looking at the directions in Leviticus i. 4, v^e can 
scarcely allow less tlianj^^g minutes for each sacrifice ; 
so that these sacrifices alone, if offered separately, 
would have taken 2,500 minutes, or nearly 42 hours, 
and could not have been offered in a single day of 
twelve hours, though each of the three priests had 
been employed in one sole incessant labor of offer- 
ing them, without a moment's rest or intermission. 
It may, perhaps, be said, that many such sacrifices 
might have been offered at the same time. This is, 
surely, somewhat contrary to the notion of a sacrifice, 
as derived from the book of Leviticus ; nor is there 
the slightest intimation, in the whole Pentateuch, of 
any such heaping together of sacrifices ; and it must 
be borne in mind, that there Avas but one altar, five 
cubits (about nine feet) square, Exodus xxvii. 1, at 
which we have already supposed all the three priests 
to be officiating at the same moment, actually offering, 
therefore, upon the altar, three sacrifices at once^ of 
which the hurnt-o^QYmg^ would, except in the case of 
poor women (Leviticus xii. 8), be lamhs^ and not 
pigeons. But then we must ask further, where could 
they have obtained these 250 ' turtle-doves or young 
pigeons ' daily ; that is, 90,000 annually, ^V^ the wilder- 
oiess ? There might be two offered for each birth ; 
there mitst^ according to the law, be one, (Lev. xii. 
G, 8.) Did the people, then, carry with them turtle- 
doves and young pigeons out of Egypt when they fled 



AT FAULT. 91 

in such haste, and so heavily laden, and as yet knew 
nothing of any such law ? Or how could they have 
had them at all under Sinai ? It can not be said that 
the laws, which require the sacrifice of such birds, 
were intended only to suit the circumstances of a later 
time, when the people should be finally settled in the 
land of Canaan." His argument is, therefore, that the 
story is incredible, and that it confutes itself. N"ow 
we turn to the literal facts of the case ; and what do 
we find ? First, the text on which the Bishop builds 
the conclusion that sacrifices were ofiered in the desert 
at all, is Amos v. 25 ; " Have ye offered unto me sac- 
rifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O 
house of Israel ?" I have turned to some of the com- 
mentators the most reliable upon this subject, and 
among the rest to Dr. Gill, the ablest Oriental scholar, 
perhaps, that ever wrote a commentary on Scripture, 
and he says, upon this very passage of Amos, " These 
sacrifices were not offered to God, but to devils — to 
the golden calf, and to the host of heaven. So their 
fathers did in the wilderness forty years, where sacri- 
fices were omitted during that time." And again he 
says, on Acts vii. 42, " They offered to devils, not to 
God ; and though there were somefeio sacrifices offered 
%ip^ yet, since they were not frequently offered, nor 
freely, and with all the heart, and without hypocrisy, 
even these were looked upon by God as if they had 
not been offered at all." Almost all commentators 
admit that few, if any sacrifices, were offered in the 



92 THE bishop's arithmetic 

desert, and that the sacrifices that Amos rebukes were 
sacrifices offered to idol gods, the golden calf, and 
such like. And therefore the Bishop's calculation how 
it was possible would be jDerfectly sound, if his prem- 
ises were tenable ; but, as the j^remises are false, the 
whole superstructure of his reasoning necessarily falls 
to the ground. 

In a new edition of his book (and I am sorry to say 
it has run through two editions of some ten or twelve 
thousand copies in a very short period of time), he 
makes this remark, speaking of the command in Exodus 
xxxii. 27: "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put 
every man his sword by his side, and go in and out 
from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every 
man his brother, and every man his comiDanion, and 
every man his neighbor." The Bisho]) says that such 
a slaughter must have been something like the slaughter 
at Cawnpore, on a recent occasion in India. But when 
we come to the actual facts of the case, we find that 
there were twenty-two thousand Levites commanded 
to act. Suppose that each Levite had slain a neighbor, 
and a companion, and a brother, three times 22,000 
would be 66,000; but the Sacred Record says that 
3000 were slain ; and, therefore, the Bishop's calcula- 
tion, that a judicial penalty, inflicted by the Judge of 
all the earth, is a piece of atrocious and sanguinary 
butchery, is scarcely fair. 

Another objection of the Bishop's is the account of 
the sun and moon standing still, as recorded in the 



AT FAULT. 93 

Book of Joshua. He sets it down as one of the apo- 
cryphal stories contained in the Bible ; and among 
other things, he shows how utterly impossible it was, 
according to his calculation, that any thing of the sort 
could have taken place. The Bishop's reasoning is 
contained in his introductory remarks, and at the 11th 
page, where he says, " Not to speak of the fact, that, 
if the earth's motion were suddenly stopped, a man's 
feet would be arrested, while his body was moving at 
the rate (on the equator) of 1,000 miles an hour," which 
is literal, just calculation; "or, rather, 1,000 miles a 
minute, since not only must the earth's diurnal rotation 
on' its axis be stopped, but its annual motion also 
through space, so that every human being and animal 
would be dashed to pieces in a moment, and a mighty 
deluge overwhelm the earth;" therefore, argues the 
Bishop, the thing is improbable, and incredible, and 
absurd. He is not at all ashamed to say the Bible as- 
serts it ; but Bishop Colenso denies it, and he leaves it 
with Christendom to decide which is truth. In the 
first place, the Bishop's difficulty seems to proceed from 
the difficulty of conceiving or understanding the process 
by which the miracle was done. Grant the postulate 
Omnipotence, and the Scripture expressly says it was 
an Omnipotent arm that did it ; what physical results 
and acts are impossible to Omnipotence ? This alone 
would be a sufficient answer. But the Bishop says, 
No; even though Omnipotence is the agent, I must 
trace the process or I will not believe it. Suppose I 



94 THE bishop's arithmetic 

apply the Bishop's reasoning to another miracle wrought 
at Cana of Galilee, where water was converted into 
wine. Xow, if Bishop Colenso would take up that 
miracle, and discuss it precisely as he has discussed the 
miracle of the sun and moon standing still, he would 
talk in this way : " Water turned into wine ! Where 
could the alcohol come from? Water is composed of 
oxygen and hydrogen ; there is no alcohol in it. Sec- 
ondly, where could the coloring matter come from? 
Water is limpid, whereas wine is purple or red. In 
the next place, where could the saccharine matter have 
come from ? for there is saccharine matter in wine, but 
in water there is no sugar at all. And then where 
could the vegetable acid have come from ? there is no 
vegetable acid in water, it is insipid and tasteless. Be- 
sides, wine requires fermentation; how could water 
have fermented without saccharine matter ; and how 
could the fermentation have been executed in an in- 
stant ? Therefore the miracle at Cana of Galilee is in- 
credible, impossible, and, therefore, untrue." The rea- 
soning is precisely the same. The answer to it all is, 
Grant Omnipotence as the power, and an arrested sun, 
and water turned into wine, are conceivable enough. 
But I will take the Bishop on his own reasoning. He 
says he doubts the possibility of it. I may explain 
that the language of Scripture is the language of the 
almanac. The sun rises and sets ; the sun reaches his 
meridian ; all that is popular language. We know per- 
fectly well that the sun's rise depends upon the earth's 



AT FAULT. 95 

rotation ; and the earliness or lateness of the rise de- 
pends upon the earth's position in its orbit. And there- 
fore, when it says the sun and moon stood still, it is 
the popular phrase, used by every astronomer in Chris- 
tendom, to denote that the earth was arrested on its 
axis, and in its orbit also ; instead of revolving on its 
axis, it rested ; instead of marching in its orbit, it be- 
came stationary. The Bishop's argument is, If the 
earth, proceeding at its prodigious velocity, had been 
arrested suddenly, every body must have been thrown 
oif into infinite space, and dashed to atoms. But the 
Bishop forgets that there are two ways of arresting a 
body in motion. Suppose I were traveling in a Great 
Western express at a rate of between fifty and sixty 
miles an hour ; if that express were to be suddenly ar- 
rested, every traveler in it would be dashed to pieces. 
But the guards put on a series of breaks, and in the 
course of less than a quarter of a mile, it is brought to 
a stand-still ; and you are scarcely conscious that it is 
arrested. Shall the guards be able to arrest a train 
safely, and prevent the destruction of those it carries ; 
and shall the Great Ruler of all the earth not know how 
to arrest safely to its inhabitants, only a faster body — 
the revolution of the earth on its axis, and its move- 
ment in its own orbit ? He assumes that God stopped 
the earth in an instant. I am taking the Bishop ac- 
cording to his own reasoning. God may have taken 
five minutes, or ten mmutes, or twenty minutes to ar- 
rest it ; but this we know, that it is one of the laws of 



96 THE bishop's arithmetic 

d}^iainics that, a body moving with the highest velocity 
may be brought to a stop gradually as well as sudden- 
ly. And if that is true of a train, w]iy may it not be 
true of the earth revolving upon its axis ? The Bishop 
has forgotten his mathematics, as well as his religion, 
when he made so blundering an objection against the 
miracle wrought by God in the days of Joshua. 

The Bishop next objects to slavery among the Jews. 
He is awfully shocked at the laws relating to slavery 
in the Old Testament Scripture. I am rather surprised 
that Bishop Colenso is shocked at slavery, for he must 
recollect that only three years ago he wrote home from 
Xatal that he thought the Zulus ought to be permitted 
to have two or three wives, if they liked. How a 
bishop, who upholds jDolygamy, can so sensitively recoil 
from slavery, I can not determine ; but it is matter of 
fact that some things which to our moral instincts are 
most objectionable, to the Bishop's moral instincts are 
perfectly allowable in the latitude of Xatal. But we 
find that polygamy existed among the Jews, and we 
place it in the same category with slavery. And the 
true solution of it all is just what the great Master 
himself tells us, namely, that " Moses, because of the 
hardness of your hearts, suffered it.'' If you look at 
the Bible, you will learn from it that the human family 
was progressively educated, rising from a lower to a 
loftier form ; and that what was tolerated in the low- 
est form was abjured and forbidden in the higher. 
Slavery existed among the Jews, vastly mitigated, and 



AT FAULT. 97 

very different from the slavery in the South American 
States, for it had restrictions, and limits, and laws of 
the most beneficent kind. We admit, with the Bishop, 
it was allowed, and so was polygamy ; but it was al- 
lowed because of the hardness of their hearts, and 
ceased as soon as they became wiser and better. 

The most striking rebuke I must notice in drawing 
these remarks to a close is — pro pudor ! — adminis- 
tered by a Jewish Rabbi to a Christian Bishop. Dr. 
Adler, a first-rate Hebrew scholar, as he must be, 
thus concludes a letter referring to Bishop Colenso : 
— " Had the author studied the Bible with a little 
greater attention, we should not have been favored 
with the outburst of his virtuous indignation ; and 
the Zulu Kafiir would have been taught the true 
meaning of Exodus xxi. 20, 22, where Bishop Colenso 
would have discovered that the commandment does 
not refer to murder with malice prepense, but to 
accidental manslaughter; and that if the slave died 
under his master's hand it was to be avenged ; and 
these expressions he will find explained by ancient 
commentators to mean, executed by the sword. In 
conclusion, let me ask Bishop Colenso one question. 
He forbids us from indulging in the imagination that 
God could reveal Himself to us by means of an in- 
fallible book ; will he have us to believe that God 
could reveal Himself through a book which contains 
such absurdities as those that he alleges are to be 

found in it ?" 

5 



98 THE bishop's arithmetic 

The Bishop's difficulties arise from looking ex- 
clusively at the human side of every question ; and 
even in this view his difficulties are not always based 
on sound arithmetic. He asks, How could God have 
done this ? How could such a miracle have taken 
place ? He forgets that all took place under a 
Theocracy, where God was King, and Captain, and 
ever-present Leader of the hosts of Israel. He leaves 
out God, and treats Moses as if he were the writer 
of a history like that of Herodotus ; and even when 
he does this, he mistakes and blunders in his arith- 
metic in a way not to have been expected from one 
who took the high honor of a Wrangler in the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge. But if the veracity of Moses 
is contingent upon. How could it be? his veracity 
will not be disputed only in the cases quoted by the 
Bishop ; but we may ask. How could the granite 
rock have gushed forth into refreshing streams by 
the touch of the rod of Moses ? How could a pil- 
lar of cloud, all blackness by day, have become il- 
luminated, splendid, and glorious by night? How 
could the sea have been cloven in twain by the 
holding out of the rod of Moses, between which 
and the literal ocean there could be no possible con- 
nection whatever ? 

Bishop Colenso is the Xicodemus of the nineteenth 
century. His constant question is, " How can these 
things be ?" I trust that if he has the difficulties 
of Nicodemus, he may obtain the grace that Nice- 



AT FAULT. 99 

demiis obtained too, and that the Bishop may yet 
live to see at once the absurdity, the contradictions, 
and the blunders of his book ; and that we on our 
part may feel more profoundly that " all Scripture 
is given by inspiration of God," and that " Thy word, 
O God, is truth." 

I can not help quoting and adding the following 
remarks by the son of the chief Rabbi of the Jews 
in London : — 

A crop of rejoinders will, no doubt, soon spring up to refute 
the various arguments used by Dr. Colenso, for impugning the his- 
torical veracity of the Pentateuch. My object in writing this let- 
ter is by no means to vindicate the truth of the Bible. I consider 
truth to be powerful enough in itself to triumph over presumption 
and injustice. The Bible has, indeed, stood more powerful attacks 
than Dr. Colenso has been enabled to make upon it. I would sim- 
ply inquire, as one of those to whom a "critical examination of 
the Pentateuch " is of special interest, how far the promise held 
out on the title-page is fulfilled in the body of the work ? The 
author assigns as one of the reasons why it had been left to him 
to discover the unhistorical character of the Pentateuch, the lit- 
tle progress which Biblical studies have as yet made among the 
English clergy, and the neglect of the study of the Hebrew lan- 
guage (p. 21). Dr. Colenso is not, I fear, much in advance of his 
brethren. In sect. 63, he says that Lev. xxiii. 40 — *' Ye shall 
take you the boughs," etc. — contains the description of the way in 
which the booths to be used during the Feast of Tabernacles were 
to be made ! — a mistake which may be overlooked if made by the 
brilliant author of " Coningsby," but it is unpardonable in one who 
is an eminent divine, and is anxious to be considered a learned 
critic. A Jewish child would set the Bishop right on this point» 



100 THE bishop's AKITHMETIC AT FAULT. 

and inform him that the four vegetable productions were to be 
taken into .the temple "to rejoice before the Lord seven days," and 
are in no way connected with the booths. 

We can easily see, however, why he has fallen into this egregious 
error. The author does not seem to have consulted the original ; 
he suffers himself to be bound in the trammels of the authorized 
version, and servilely copies its mistranslations. 

And further, throughout the criticism, the author wholly ignores 
the labors of the Jewish commentators in the same field. He de- 
votes so much space (chaps, ii. and iii.) to show that the clumsy 
devices of Kurtz and Hengstenberg for reconciling the difficulty 
about the family of Judah are untenable, but does not allude to 
the simple solution suggested by the critical Ibn Ezra, that the 
idiom used need not be taken literally, but that the event recorded 
in that chapter may have taken place many years before (just as 
in Deut. x. 8). 

It is indeed a strange occurrence to find the Jew, 
in the nineteenth century, more zealous for the in- 
tegrity of God's Holy Word than the Bishop of 
Natal. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PASSOVER A:N^D ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 
EXODUS XII. 1-13. 

"And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of 
Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of 
months : it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak ye 
unto all the congregation of Israel, saying. In the tenth day of this 
month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the 
house of their fathers, a lamb for an house : and if the household 
be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his 
house take it according to the number of the souls ; every man 
according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. Your 
lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year : ye shall 
take it out from the sheep, or from the goats : and ye shall keep 
it up until the fourteenth day of the same month ; and the whole 
assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. 
And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side 
posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall 
eat it. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, 
and unleavened bread ; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Eat 
not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire ; his 
head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof. And ye shall 
let nothing of it remain until the morning ; and that which remain- 
etli of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire. And thus shall 
ye eat it ; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your 
staff in your hand ; and ye shall eat it in haste : it is the Lord's 
passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and 
will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; 



102 THE PASSOVER 

and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment : I am 
the Lord. And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the 
houses where ye are : and when I see the blood, I will pass over 
you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when 
I smite the land of Egypt." 

It is strange that the most determined and the most 
unjustifiable assault by the Bishop of N"atal on the in- 
stitutions and the facts of the ancient economy has 
been made on this most beautiful, most suggestive, and 
evangelical institution. I have already discussed vari- 
ous details of arithmetical and mathematical objections 
laid against certain portions of Scripture, and having 
got rid of these, we now come into the open sea, for 
the discussion of great and suggestive truths, that, 
like the sun in the firmament, prove themselves simply 
by their shining. God gives command, and says, " I 
will pass through the land of Egypt this night." (Ex- 
odus xii. 12.) The Bishop argues that the instruction 
was given to the Israelites to select a lamb that very 
night, to kill that lamb, to sprinkle the door-posts, and 
to be off in that very morning as fast as their feet could 
carry them. He argues, mathematically as before, but 
absurdly as usual, that this was incredible and impos- 
sible. But he never can have read the chapter fairly, 
or at least with his mind awake to the suggestive 
points that it contains ; for I should draw an inference 
just the reverse of what he draws. He says, the com- 
mand was given and the lamb slain that same night. 
The strict law of the institution is contained in the 



AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 103 

third verse : " In the tenth day of this month they 
shall take to them every man a lamb." They were to 
keep it till the fom^teenth day of the month, and on 
the fom-teenth day of the month they were to slay it. 
But what does that imply? That the selection of 
the lamb was made upon the tenth day ; that it 
Avas kept in silence for examination fom- days ; that 
on the fom^teenth day, between the evenings, or be- 
tween three and six o'clock in the afternoon, it was 
slain. When God refers to " this night," He means 
the night on which the lamb was slain ; " I will pass 
through Egypt." He does not teach that the lamb 
was both selected and slain that same night, on 
which God passed in judgment through Egypt ; on 
the contrary. He says expressly it was to be selected 
on the tenth, it was to be slain upon the fourteenth ; 
and on this very night, that is, the fourteenth, " I 
will pass through the land of Egypt, and will ex- 
ecute judgment upon the firstborn of Egypt," " from 
the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, 
even unto the firstborn of the maid-servant that is 
behind the mill." How, therefore, any one reading 
this can have made so gross and palpable a mistake, 
I can not possibly conceive ; but it is gratifying to 
know that the detection of the mistake is so obvi- 
ous, and the refutation of the seeming impossibility 
so easy. 

The next objection of the Bishop Avliicli I will 
notice, before I enter upon the meaning, the mag- 



104 THE PASSOVER 

nificent meaning of this institution, is, How was it 
possible that in the land of Egypt they could have 
got what was actually requisite — lambs at all equal in 
number to the houses of Israel ? How could they 
have found pasture for two million sheep, the mini- 
mum number requisite to supply so many lambs to the 
vast multitude, for passover sacrifices on that mem- 
orable night ? This is the question that he asks, and 
to which his answer is. It was impossible. And in 
order to show that it was impossible, the Bishop 
says, that in ISTatal, where he had been accustomed 
to work, one sheep only could be fed upon one acre ; 
and he also calculates the relative si2jes of Egypt, and 
Goshen, and Natal ; and his inference is, that it is 
impossible that any thing like a million, much less 
two million sheep, could have been fed uj)on all the 
pastures of the land of Egypt ; and therefore his argu- 
ment is, there could not have been found as many 
lambs as were requisite — a lamb for a house — to cele- 
brate the passover on that memorable night when the 
angel of the Lord passed through, and slew the first- 
born of Egypt. The answer that we give is — first, 
the sacred narrative asserts that the requisite number 
was found ; secondly, Natal is not Egypt, and he 
would require to show that the cases were perfectly 
parallel before the one could be a perfect illustration 
of the other ; and that if the Bishop, instead of look- 
ing to Natal to ascertain how many sheep could be 
fed upon an acre, had only retained some reminis- 



AND ITS SIGKIFICANCE. 105 

cences of his native land, he would have found the 
following fact, which has been quoted by the Rev. 
Mr. M'Caul, from " Fullarton's Gazetteer," published 
in Edinburgh in 1856, under the heading "Dorset, 
tiie county of Dorset." The statement there is as 
follows : — " Through the central parts of the county 
of Dorset runs a ridge of chalk hills, declining on the 
south side into downs and valleys, which abound in 
a short, sweet herbage, nourishing from 800,000 to 
1,000,000 sheep." Now, if one county in England, 
or rather a section of a county of England, can nour- 
ish a million sheep (and this is a matter of statistics), 
the Bishop surely might have had the common sense 
to infer that the land of Goshen, rich in the richest 
pasture, could have nourished, not two millions — 
which he says it never could have nourished — but 
five or six million sheep ; taking the pasture of the 
county of Dorset as the guiding element in our calcu- 
lation. Therefore the arguments of the Bishop do not 
hold water, the illustrations he employs fail, and the 
irresistible fact stands out before us, that God's Word, 
whetlier you appeal to the facts of history, or to the 
phenomena of nature, or to the earth with its pastures, 
justifies itself, and vindicates its author God, its inspi- 
ration truth, and its end evermore the happiness of 
mankind and the glory of God ! 

But without dwelling more upon these points, which 
are really not the most weighty and conclusive reasons 
of all, we will turn to the marvelous coincidence be- 



106 THE PASSOVER 

tween the type, or the passover-lamb, and the Antitype, 
or Christ crucified ; and we shall see that it is impossi- 
ble to come to any other conclusion than that the one 
was a Divine institution, pre-figurative and pre-signifi- 
cant of the other. Let us study a portion of the lan- 
guage that expresses it. We have seen it in the 12th 
of Exodus, we find it also alluded to in the 13th ; also 
in Deuteronomy x^d. ; also in Isaiah liii. Read care- 
fully, at your leisure, the 53d of Isaiah, and what will 
be your inference *' That the whole language is paschal 
language, that every allusion in it indicates the Paschal 
Lamb to be the event to which it refers, " He is brought 
as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her 
shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth." Turn 
again to the institution of the Lord's Supper, in the 
26th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and see 
what is said there ; we read : " "Now the first day of 
the feast of anleavened bread the disciples came to 
Jesus, saying unto Him, Where wilt thou that we pre- 
pare for thee to eat the passover ?" The disciples be- 
lie A'ed in the institution, and in its obligation from year 
to year. But what did Jesus say ? Did He say. The 
passover is a myth — it was a delusion that Moses was 
led into, or that the Jews adopted — it is not a fact ; 
or, in the language of the Bishop of Xatal, It is unhis- 
torical and untrue ? If the Saviour had so said, the 
argument would be finished. But what does He say ? 
Let us read ; " Go into the city to such a man, and say 
unto him. The Master saith, My time is at hand ; I will 



AND ITS SIGNIFICAKCE. 107 

keep the passover at thy house with mj disciples." 
That implies that the Saviour believed in the passover 
as an ancient Levitical institution. Well, we read next : 
" And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them ; 
and they made ready the passover." Can we suppose 
that our blessed Lord celebrated a myth, that He justi- 
fied the observance of a mere vague, unfounded tra- 
dition; or that the Lord's Supper grew out of a ro- 
mance, a falsehood, a lie ? It is impossible. Yet that 
is the alternative we are driven to, if the passover was 
not an historical fact, was not an institution that had 
Divine sanction, and was not, and could not, as Dr. 
Colenso says, have been observed by the ancient Jews. 
If we turn to the 6th of John, we shall understand its 
meaning most easily by bearing in mind the passover 
throughout. For instance, "Jesus said unto them, I 
am the bread of life." And again. He says, lower 
down in the chapter, at the 51st verse, "I am the liv- 
ing bread which came down from heaven : if any man 
eat of this bread, he shall live forever : and the bread 
that I Avill give is my flesh, which I will give for the 
life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among 
themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh 
to eat? Then Jesus said unto them. Verily, A^erily, I 
say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 
man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." This 
seems very violent language, unless there be some un- 
derlying allusion to justify and bear it out. But we 
find that after the lamb was slain in the ancient usao-o 



108 THE PASSOVER 

of Israel, its flesh was eaten to denote the interest of 
the people in it; and therefore the language of Jesus, 
" Except ye eat my flesh, and drink my blood," means, 
that I am the Lamb about to be offered up a sacrifice, 
and that your life in this world, your hopes for the 
next, your strength, your security, your peace, are all 
derived from your feeding on me and living by me ; 
so that the life that you live you live by the faith of the 
Son of God, who loved you and gave Himself for you. 
There is other language equally allusive. When Jesus 
appeared, what did John the Baptist say? "Behold 
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
world." What was that ? Paschal or passover lan- 
guage ; as if he said to them : " The passover lamb, 
selected on the tenth and slain on the fourteenth, is 
gone ; it is a shadow that has now passed away ; be- 
hold the Lamb — the true passover Lamb — that taketh 
away the sin of the world." Again, we read in Acts 
viii, 32, referring to Isaiah liii. : " He was led as a sheep 
to the slaughter ; and like a lamb dumb before his 
shearers, so opened He not His mouth." Again, we 
read in 1 Cor. v. 7 : " Christ our passover is sacrificed 
for us ; therefore let us keep the feast, not with old 
leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wicked- 
ness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and 
truth." That this passover was a fact, is obvious from 
tlie language that is used even in the songs of heaven ; 
for we read in the book of Revelation, at the fifth chap, 
ter : " And when He had taken the book, the four liv* 



AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 109 

ing creatures and four and twenty elders fell down be- 
fore the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and 
golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of 
saints. And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art 
worthy to take the book, and to open the seals there- 
of: for thou wast slain," ("and thou shalt slay it be- 
tween the evenings,") '' and hast redeemed us to God 
by thy Hood out of every kindred, and tongue, and 
people, and nation ; and hast made us unto our God 
kings and priests : and we shall reign on the earth. 
And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels 
round about the throne and the beasts and the elders : 
and the number of them was ten thousand times ten 
thousand, and thousands of thousands ; saying with a 
loud voice. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to re- 
ceive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, 
and honor, and glory, and blessing. And every crea- 
ture which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under 
the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are 
in them, heard I saying. Blessing, and honor, and glory, 
and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, 
and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." Put all these 
allusions together, and take the language of Peter : 
" Ye were not redeemed with silver and gold, but with 
the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without 
blemish and without spot ;" " without blemish " — mark 
that word : " A lamb of the flock, a male without 
blemish." And what must be the inference? That 
the whole New Testament Scripture regards the pass- 



110 THE PASSOVER 

over sacrifice as the most expressive illustration of 
Christ our Passover, slain for us ; and that much of the 
language of the New Testament is inexplicable unless 
we assume that the passover was a fact ; and that what 
Ave read in the 12th of Exodus was the ritual and the 
rubric for the observance of that ancient institution 
ordained by God Himself. 

Why do I state these things ? ISTot because Christ- 
ians doubt, but because skeptics, or those of a skepti- 
cal turn of mind, are very apt to raise the superstruc- 
ture of grand conclusions upon vague and imfounded 
misinterpretations of plain and obvious passages in the 
Word of God. Nothing can be plainer than the evi- 
dence that the passover was instituted by God ; that 
it was observed on that memorable night ever to be re- 
membered ; and that lambs sufficient Avere provided for 
it. And as to the difficulties w^hich the Bishop unhap- 
pily conjures up, they are difficulties that beset every 
thing upon earth. We breathe difficulties ; Ave are 
surrounded by difficulties. How" can I explain the pro- 
cess by Avhich my mind, an immaterial force, acts upon 
my body, a material subject? Hoav can I explain 
Omnipresence, or Omnipotence, or the existence of 
Deity, or my OAvn existence, or a thousand things ? 
The difficulties that beset a theme are reasons for its 
study, not valid objections to its truth. 

Having disposed of the Bishop's difficulties, I Avould 
now try to feed the flock Avith the great truths that are 
contained in this passage. First, the origin of the in- 



AND ITS SIGNIFICxiNCE. Ill 

stitution was Israel's deliverance. The iron had pierced 
their souls ; their groans and cries rose up to heaven 
for liberty. They felt Egypt was not their home ; its 
flesh-pots could not be their bread ; its air could not be 
their life. God resolved, therefore, in the exercise of 
mercy upon them, but in the infliction of terrible judg- 
ments upon Pharaoh, to emancipate them with a high 
hand and with an outstretched arm. The process that 
He adopted we read in the 12th chapter of Exodus. 
What is the first lesson it there teaches? First, all 
blessings that ever have been tasted by the ancient 
church, all the mercies that can possibly be received or 
enjoyed by us, are intimately associated with sacrifice. 
Israel never had a blessing till it was sprinkled Avith 
atoning blood; we never can have a mercy, from a 
crumb of bread to a crown of glory, from the air we 
breathe to the sunshine of heaven we hope to enjoy, 
unless sprinkled by atoning blood. There is not a 
shower on the field, nor a spring in the valley, nor a 
loaf upon your table, nor a cup of water in your hand, 
nor a happy beat in your heart, nor a bright fire on 
your hearth, that is not associated with and dependent 
on that cross which was raised on Calvary — that sacri- 
fice " Christ our passover sacrificed for us." There is 
not a rest that you enjoy in the present, there is not a 
blessed hope that you cherish, there is not a truth re- 
A^ealed in the Bible, there is not a ray of sunshine that 
descends from the sanctuary above, that is not inti- 
mately and inseparablv connected with Christ and with 



112 THE PASSOVER 

Ilim crucified. There center all our best and our 
brightest hopes ; there die and disappear our worst 
and our most perplexing fears ; there is seen the price 
of the least and the loftiest blessing that you, and your 
children, and your children's children, ever enjoyed or 
can enjoy upon earth. The cross lies broad, and deep, 
and palpable to a Christian heart upon all earth's bless- 
ings, upon all heaven's joys ; and by that cross alone 
can the greatest saint — and, thank God, may the great- 
est sinner — climb to the heights of glory. Such is the 
first lesson. 

The second lesson I would learn from this institution 
is, the lamb selected for the sacrifice was required to 
be — and this is laid down as an essential part of the in- 
stitution — without blemish, or a lamb without spot. 
Let us mark tliQ coincidence between the institution 
that has passed away, and the blessed Saviour it fore- 
shadowed, who remains ; and see if the coincidence be- 
tween them is not evidence that the one was a fact, and 
that the other is its solution and its end. The Saviour 
is declared by the apostle Peter to have been a Lamb 
without blemish or without sj^ot ; He is declared to 
have been " that holy thing that shall be born of thee." 
It^ is said of Him again, " In Him was no sin." On 
Him was the mountain load of a Avorld's sin ; in Him 
was no sin at all. Our sins were on Him, not in Him, 
therefore He was slam ; and, blessed be God, His 
righteousness is on us, not in us, therefore we are just 
ified and accepted of Him from everlasting to ever- 



AND ITS SIGNIFICAKCE. 113 

lasting. Our sins lay heavy upon Him, but not one 
taint or touch of them was in that holy, holy, holy 
heart of His ; His righteousness never can be in us, but 
it is imputed to us ; and just as that Saviour, when He 
died upon the cross, was infinitely innocent, so when 
you and I shall stand on the margin of heaven, we 
shall be then and there miserable sinners, but accepted 
tln'ough the perfect righteousness of Him, Christ our 
Passover, sacrificed for us. He was the innocent when 
He died ; we shall be the guilty when we are justified. 
Our sins on Him, not in Him, dragged Him to the ac- 
cursed tree ; His righteousness on us, with nothing in 
us, shall entitle us to the heights of heaven, and to ever- 
lasting blessedness and joy ! 

The lamb, the passover lamb, was set apart on the 
tenth day, and it was killed on the fourteenth day, be- 
tween the evenings ; that is, from three to six o'clock 
in the evening. Here, notice again the coincidence — 
and the coincidence, while instructire to us as Christ- 
ians, is confirmatory of what Moses has recorded re- 
specting that institution. The lamb, set apart four 
days, by its silence eloquently impressed upon Israel 
the necessity for this sacrifice. The Saviour set apart 
from His baptism by the Holy Ghost, when the Holy 
Ghost descended upon Him, till He died, nearly four 
years — a day for a year being the ordinary rule in pro- 
phecy; and during these four years. He taught His 
great lessons, preached His blessed sermons, spake in 
beautiful and suggestive parables, performed stupen- 



114 THE PASSOVER 

dons miracles, and gave the whole land lessons that 
live along the ages, and are the sunshine, and the hope, 
and the inspiration of increasing thousands of mankind. 
And during all these four years in which the Saviour 
was set ajDart, Satan searched Him, and had nothing 
to say against Him ; Pilate examined Him, and he was 
constrained to say, " I find no fault in him ;" officers, 
and soldiers, and constables, sent to take Him, came 
back and said, " Xever man spake like this man." Just- 
ified by heaven, acquitted by earth, searched by Satan, 
pronounced faultless in echoes that reverberated through 
the whole universe. He died, the infinitely innocent 
One, in the room and stead of us, the guilty and the 
fallen children of Adam. 

We are told that the passover, after its first in- 
stitution and celebration in the land of Egypt, must 
ever afterwards be celebrated in Jerusalem. So 
Christ, our Passover, died not in Bethlehem, not in 
Jericho, not in imperial Rome, not in aesthetic and 
cultivated Athens, but in Jerusalem our Passover was 
sacrificed for us. The coincidence, therefore, here, 
too, is complete ; and such coincidences are argu- 
ments. If you find a lock — one of Bramah's, or 
Chubb's, or Hobbs' locks — of excessively intricate 
structure, and with wards the most perplexing, and 
you find a key that fits the wards and opens the lock, 
you infer that the key was meant for the lock, and 
the lock was meant for the key. There are between 
Christ our Passover and the Jewish passover such 



AKD ITS SIGNIFICAKCE. 115 

coincidences, such a perfect adaptation of the one to 
the other that the inference of every man — except- 
ing, of course, the Bishop of ISTatal — must be that 
the one was designed to prefigure the other ; and 
that Christ, our Passover, is the substitute now for 
the great historic fact of the passover lamb slain on 
that memorable night of the march of Israel from 
the thralldom and the bondage of Egypt. 

I pass on to another truth, and a most suggestive 
and precious one it is for us. After the lamb was 
slain and offered up, its blood was caught, we are 
told, in a basin, a bunch of hyssop was dipped into 
the basin, and the blood was sprinkled on the door- 
post and the lintel of the house in which the lamb 
was slain. Here we have the proof that the atone- 
ment made by the sacrifice of that lamb was the 
safety of the children of Israel. When the angel of 
death swept on strong pinion through the length and 
breadth of Egypt, on that memorable and awful 
night, and when he wished to ascertain where he 
should strike and where he should spare, what guid- 
ed him ? He did not ask what were the virtues of 
the father of the household within, that he miglit 
spare on account of them; nor what were the sins 
of the family within the house, that he might strike 
there. These were inquiries he did not institute. 
The safety of the house was not the virtue of its 
inmates, not the goodness of the father, nor the love 
of the mother, nor the obedience of the children — 



116 THE PASSOVER 

virtues of course beautiful in their j^lace ; the safety 
of each house in that dark night, in the midst of 
Egypt, was some tiling outside, not any thing within ; 
it was the blood sprinkled on the lintel and door- 
posts of the house. The angel's mission was to 
strike — not where sin had been perpetrated within, 
but — Avhere there was no blood upon the lintel ; and 
the command to the angel was to spare — not where 
there were virtues in the lives of the inmates of the 
house, but — where there was blood sprinkled visibly 
upon the lintel and the door-posts of the house. Mag 
nificent, glorious truth ! your safety is not the virtues 
you have practiced, nor the graces that adorn you, 
nor the unimpeachable spotlessness of all your an- 
tecedents combined — things in their place and of 
themselves dutiful and beautiful before God and be- 
fore mankind ; your safety, your - only safety, is in 
blood shed for you, not in any thing done by you. 
Your safety in the hour of death, your acquittal at 
the judgment throne, your right to everlasting glory, 
the reason of your exemption from all the curses 
that are written in this law, is nothing done in you, 
nothing suffered by you, nothing paid by you ; but 
Avholly, solely, perfectly, and completely, the blood 
that has been shed by Christ our Passover, sacrificed 
for us. And if that blood be sprinkled upon you ; 
if you have washed your robes, to use the language 
of the Apocalypse, and made them Avhite in the 
blood of the Lamb ; neither sin, nor Satan, nor life. 



AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 117 

nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
be able to separate you from the love of God that 
is in Jesus Christ our Lord. "The blood of Jesus 
Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin." " We have 
remission by His blood, even the forgiveness of sins." 
Do you believe that ? Have you trust in that ? 
Can you lay the stress of your everlasting prospects 
upon this, that nothing done by you, nothing done 
in you, nothing pledged, jDromised, or paid by any 
one on earth, but that blood that has been shed for 
you — can you say this is enough? Let the Bishop 
of Natal quibble ; let him conjure up difficulties like 
specters from the distant and the gloomy past ; but 
let the humblest Christian say, and be assured while 
he says it, that it will stand him in stead in that day, 
"I know, whatever he knows, I know in whom I 
have believed, and that Christ is able to keep what 
I have committed to Him against that day, and to 
present me faultless before His presence in glory 
with exceeding joy." 

Here, then, is the great truth of Christ our Pass- 
over, sacrificed for us. What a pity that a Christian 
minister should give up so splendid a lesson in def- 
erence to perplexing quibbles and difficulties, which 
in themselves are not founded in fact, and which, 
if we could not solve them, are not sufficient to dis- 
prove a plain historical institution, interwoven, like 



118 THE PASSOVER 

woof and warp, Avith the whole texture of the Bible 
and of Christianity. 

I take another lesson from this most precious in- 
stitution. The lamb was not only slain a sacrifice, 
and its blood the shelter of every house — just as 
Christ has been slain, not a martyr, not a victim, but 
a sacrifice, and His blood the shelter of every heart 
— ^but, as we read of that institution, after the lamb 
was slain, and its blood liad been the shelter, its 
iiesh was roasted, and was eaten by the household 
assembled that memorable night beneath the shadow 
of the blood-protected roof. 

But, how do we explain this in reference to the 
great Antitype ? It is here we have the explanation : 
■ — " Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of 
the Son of man, ye have no life in you." It was 
literally applied to the Jew ; you must kill the lamb, 
you must shed its blood, that blood must be your 
protection ; but except you eat its flesh, as God has 
instituted, you can not have the enjoyment of all 
the fruits and the benefits of that Divine institution. 
But how can this be ajDplied to us ? I answer, a 
Christian does not feed upon Christ's righteousness, 
or upon Christ's pardon, but on Christ, to use the 
Scripture language ; he eats the flesh, he drinks the 
blood of the Son of man, but not at the communion- 
table, where we materially eat bread and drink wine ; 
but really and truly, because spiritually, by faith, 
throughout his whole life and conduct, from time to 



AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 119 

eternity. Let me explain it. If I were to tell you 
that a tree feeds upon air, and light, and sunshine, 
you would not imagine that I meant to convey that 
a tree masticates the air, and the light, and the sun- 
shine, as you and I eat food. All that the phrase 
would convey to you, or to any intelligent man, 
would be, that the nature of a tree is such that by 
its structure it absorbs the light, and the air, and 
the sunshine ; and it grows in size and strength, 
and derives nutriment by doing so. In the same 
manner when we say, a Christian eats the flesh and 
drinks the blood of the Son of man, we do not mean 
that he literally masticates these, which is monstrous 
and absurd; but that just as the tree feeds upon 
light, and sunshine, and air, so the Christian, accord- 
ing to the very nature of his soul, feeds upon what 
Christ is, is nourished and strengthened by the 
knowledge of what Christ has done, and appropri- 
ates Christ, as the tree appropriates air, and light, 
and sunshine, that which is the nutriment of his 
soul, the joy of his spirit, and the hope of his heart, 
through everlasting ages. The phrase is purely fig- 
urative, and is meant to convey, not that a Christian 
literally eats flesh and drinks blood at the Lord's 
table, which would be a monstrous carnal delusion ; 
but that by the very nature of liis soul, believing on 
and looking to the Lord Jesus Christ, he appropri- 
ates from Him that finished righteousness, Avliich is 
his trust, that atoning efficacy in His death which 



120 THE PASSOVER 

is his pardon, that peace which he needs amidst the 
world's troubles, and that hope which stretches into 
everlasting ages. And thus a Christian can say 
literally, " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; 
and the life that I live I live through the power and 
faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave 
Himself for me I" Here, then, you have the pass- 
over Lamb partaken of 

Let me notice, in the next place, that the safety of 
the household,- as I have shown you, was derived 
wholly from the blood sprinkled on the threshold ; but 
the inner comfort of the Israelite, notwithstanding 
this, may not have been great. I can conceive that 
some mother clasped more tightly in her arms her first- 
born, v>'hen she heard the beat of the angel's wings as 
he swept through every street in broad Egypt, and as 
she listened to the wail that rose from the next door, 
where father and mother gazed upon their first-born 
stricken dead by the angel's breatli ; that she trembled 
and feared, while her heart beat violently, dreading lest 
the next stroke should lay her first-born pale and cold 
beside her ; and she clasped it to her bosom only the 
more ardently as she thought of and feared the death 
that might soon overtake it. But what did her hus- 
band say to her ? He said, " You are afraid, you are 
troubled ; you love your child, you clasp and hold it 
fast, and you do well ; but your safety is not here, but 
there — the blood sprinkled on the lintel ; and your 
comfort must be there also ; and you may have perfect 



AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 121 

peace, not because you are excellent, but because the 
blood of the lamb has been sprinkled upon the door- 
post." The inmate of the blood-besprinkled house, by 
doubts and fears, natural and to be expected, imperiled 
Iier comfort ; but these doubts and fears did not in the 
least shake her indestructible safety before heaven and 
before earth. Many true Christians who approach the 
Lord's table come with doubt^, — doubts that they can 
not keep down, fears that thrust up like bubbles from 
the depths of a deep sea, anxieties that they would 
crush, but can not ; and sometimes they say to them- 
selves, '' Well, really, I begin almost to doubt that I 
am a Christian at all." This is not only likely, but 
common. But what is to be your peace ? Whence 
your comfort ? Not wrestling with these doubts, and 
difficulties, and perplexities, that rise from the swamps 
of the old Adam who still clings to you, and clasps 
you round. Your sense of peace, your encouragement^ 
your joy, must be the blood that was shed for you, and 
not the good things and the grand things that have 
been done by you. Your right and title to come to 
the Lord's table, is not your virtues, nor your charities, 
nor your goodness, nor any thing in you, nor any thing 
done by you ; but what Christ has suffered for you, or 
the blood upon the lintel and the door-posts of your 
heart. We shall never know what the safety, and the 
peace, and the happiness, and the joy of a Christian 
are, till we learn never by introspective looks to try to 

pump out peace and happiness from our own empty 
6 



122 THE PASSOVER AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 

hearts ; but by looking outside to see what was done 
for us 1830 years ago ; and, then, justified by faith, we 
shall have peace with God through Jesus Christ our 
Lord. Oh ! who, who would willingly give up so 
precious a truth, so suggestive a lesson, so blessed a 
gospel as the gospel of the passover, Christ our Pass- 
over, sacrificed for us ! 

One thought more, and I have done. It is this : — • 
There were two things in the passover. First, the 
father had to take a lamb, and he had to shed its blood 
— a painful act to a sensitive mind. No man can see an 
animal die without feeling pain ; and if we are the cause 
of that pain, we must be the more grieved and vexed. 
This was the painful part. But after the lamb was 
slain, and during successive ages, there followed what 
was the pleasant part — namely, the family gathered 
round, ate the roasted flesh, with bitter herbs, and a 
cup of wine ; that was \h^ pleasant^ or the joyous part. 
In ancient Egypt, on that memorable night, and during 
after ages, year by year, the poor Jew had to do the 
painful part, which was to kill the lamb, as well as to 
enjoy the pleasant part, which was to drink the wine 
and eat the flesh. But in Christendom, magnificent 
bequest, glorious heritage ! Jesus took to Himself all 
the painful part, and finished it ; and He has bequeath- 
ed to us all the pleasant part^ the feast that succeeds 
the sacrifice. Our passover was finished 1830 years 
ago ; but our feast upon the passover is continued year 
by year, till Christ return crowned with many crowns. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE EXODUS. 

I HAVE investigated , the Bishop's objections to the 
fact of the passover. Contrary to the notion of this 
prelate, who has written with great subtlety, but with 
great rashness upon these acts of ancient history, I 
have shown that the passover is an historic fact ; that 
no man reading the Scriptures with an impartial and 
unprejudiced mind can come logically or reasonably 
to any other conclusion than that the passover was 
neither a myth nor a Jewish tradition, but an insti- 
tution based on fact, and perpetuated by the Divine 
command, till, having fulfilled its purpose, like the 
morning twilight, it was resolved into the sunshine 
that brightens more and more into the noon of ever- 
lasting day. How the Bishop of Natal can main- 
tain what he has stated upon this subject, it is hard 
to say. Our blessed Lord tells His disciples, " Go 
and find a place where I may eat the passover." Can 
it be said, or will any man maintain, that the Saviour 
accepted a tradition, a myth, a usage unhistorical and 
unreal, and thus celebrated an ancient sham as His 
farewell to an economy that had served its object 
and was about to pass away ? Or can the apostle 



124 THE EXODUS. 

Paul have supposed that he was dealing with and 
sanctioning a mere m}i:h when he said, " Christ our 
passover is sacrificed for us " ? But apart altogether 
from these direct Scriptural allusions to it, there is 
the undeniable fact, that the passover perfectly fits 
the atonement of Christ, and just as the key fits the 
wards of Bramah's intricate lock, and proves that it 
was made for the lock, so the harmony between the 
passover tl at has ceased and the atonement that 
endures is so perfect, in its most minute details, that 
it is impossible to escape the conclusion that God 
instituted the one to set forth and foreshadow the 
other. 

I pass on to another inquiry, to the results of which, 
as in all previous investigations, the BishojD objects in 
the strongest terms. He maintains that the whole 
story of the Exodus and journey through the desert 
is incredible, or, to say the least, improbable. This is 
really monstrous — so much so, that to Christian minds 
the refutation of it must appear unnecessary ; but to 
young men who have read little on this once more 
rising controversy, these expositions must be useful. 
It is not for the sake of the Bishop of Xatal that I 
would dispose of his difficulties, but because it gives 
an opportunity of replying to objections, obsolete and 
old, long and constantly urged. The truth is, the 
Bishop's objections are old ghosts conjured up by his 
episcopal incantation, clothed in the raiment of the 
nineteenth century, and paraded upon the stage of 



THE EXODUS. 125 

the world as if he had excavated marvels and made 
hrilliant discoveries in virgin soil. 

The Bishop asserts very strongly that it is alto- 
gether incredible, at all events highly improbable, that 
the Israelites spent so many years in the desert, and 
found in that wild and bleak wilderness food for them- 
selves, and pasture for their cattle. He says, under 
chapter xii., "The story," — as he phrases it in his 
contemptuous treatment of Scripture, which to Christ- 
ian minds is most distressing — " represents them as 
possessing these flocks and herds during the whole of 
the forty years which they spent in the wilderness. 
It can not be pretended that the state of the country 
through which they traveled has undergone any mate- 
rial change from that time to this. It is described as 
being then what it is now, a ' desert land,' a ' waste, 
howling wilderness,' Deuteronomy xxxii. 10. ' Why 
have ye brought the congregation of Jehovah into 
this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die 
there ? And wherefore have ye made us to come up 
out of Egypt, to bring us unto this evil place ? It is 
no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pome- 
granates ; neither is there any icater to drinJc .'^ " 
Numbers xx. 4, 5. Now, says the Bisliop, that 
being the state of the desert, how can we, as rational 
men, suppose that two millions of people, with cattle 
and sheep, and floeks of immense extent, lived in a 
desert where there was no water, — a waste, howling 
wilderness — with nothing sufKcicnt to supply their 



126 THE EXODUS. 

every-day wants and necessities ? The great answer, 
whatever improbability appears to his mind, is, God 
so records it. But if the Bishop had read the picture 
of the waste, howling wilderness from beginning to 
end, or rather, if he had not picked out the points 
that suited his purpose, and ignored and unpardonably 
passed over the intimations that destroy that purpose, 
he would have come to a very different but just con- 
clusion. It is quite true that the inspired penman 
says, "He found him in a desert land, and in the 
waste howling wilderness ;" just as the Bishop quotes 
it. But what does the sacred penman add? "He 
made him to ride on the high places of the earth, that 
he might eat the increase of the fields ; and he made 
him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the 
flinty rock; butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with 
fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and 
goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou 
didst drink the pure blood of the grape." Let the 
Bishop account for the fact as he likes ; it is never- 
theless stated in the one clause it was a waste, howl- 
ing wilderness, it was a desert ; but in the next, that 
God there gave them milk, and oil, and honey, and 
bread in inexhaustible abundance. Why has the 
Bishop passed by these modifying statements ? He 
is partial, querulous, blind. He reads the story of 
the exode as he reads the history of Herodotus, Taci- 
tus, or Caesar, only not so carefully. He forgets that 
the whole of Israel's history is upon a loftier plane, a 



THE EXODUS. 127 

higher level, and amid a celestial light. God in the 
midst of them, turning rock into water, and showers 
into bread, is as real a fact as their march through 
the desert, or their passage through the cloven bil- 
lows of the Red Sea. I would specially urge on 
every Christian, that it be borne in mind, in reading 
the Scriptures, that it is the Word of God which 
records the work of God ; and the work of God 
would not be credible were it not written in the 
Word of God, which is avowedly inspired. God 
was as much in the desert through which the Israel- 
ites passed as He was at the foundation of the world, 
the creation of the stars, and the arrangement of the 
whole universe. It is a sad tendency which in the 
present day pervades our literature to a very deplo- 
rable extent, the tendency to find a world without a 
Maker : life without a providence : the Bible without 
inspiration, and its history without God. With the 
settled belief that Deity was visibly and sensibly pre- 
sent, and imminent in all the history of Israel, its 
most sublime acts become not only credible but rea- 
sonable. God was in the pillar of cloud, God was 
by the Red Sea, God Avas in Egypt, God was in every 
chapter of that strange history. The history of the 
Exodus is simply lifting up a corner of the curtain, 
and letting us see the facts that transjDire on earth, 
and the phenomena that flash through the sky as the 
mere outward and visible exponents of Him whose 



128 THE EXODUS. 

finger is on the springs of the universe, and whose 
footprints are on the sands of the desert. 

But there is one glaring blunder here, in relation to 
this passage, perfectly unpardonable on the part of the 
Bishop — I mean unpardonable in him as a critic and 
interpreter of Scripture. Speaking from ISTumbers xx. 
4, 5, he says : "From this passage it appears also that 
the water from the rock did 7iot follow them, as some 
have supposed." He quotes the words of the murmur- 
ers, let it be observed — " Neither is there any water 
to drink ;" and then he says : " From this jDassage it is 
plain that the water from the rock did not follow the 
Israelites, as some have supposed." I will not charge 
the Bishop with being intentionally dishonest. I think 
all controversy that imputes motives, or that supj^oses 
or assumes that one of the controversialists is capable 
of deliberately misrepresenting, is to be deprecated; 
yet it is to me most extraordinary that the Bishop 
should make an assertion from the 20th chapter of the 
book of Numbers, that the water from the rock did 
not follow them. The words in Numbers xx. 5, are : 
" It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of 
pomegranates ; neither is there any water to drink." 
That was what the Israelites complained of. The 
Bishop says ; " From this passage it appears also that 
the water from the rock did not follow them, as some 
have supposed." He seems not to have read the chap- 
ter, for it was after the Israelites murmured that 
" there was no water," that God commanded Moses 



THE EXODUS. 129 

to strike the rock, and the waters gushed forth. The 
Bishop assumes that the water from the rock was not 
following them, because they complained there was no 
water ; whereas their complaint of no water was pre- 
vious to the striking of the rock, and was the occasion 
of its being struck, in order to yield the water, of the 
want of which they so bitterly complained. Let us 
read it, because it shows the Bishop to be rash, and 
reckless, and unreliable. I will venture to say that one 
of our Sunday-school children would have exposed the 
Bishop's error here most triumphantly. I fear he 
needs to go to school to learn. Sunday-school children 
do not perpetrate blunders so palpably unhistorical and 
unworthy. In the 20th chapter of the book of Num- 
bers we read at the second verse the words of the com- 
plaint : " And there was no water for the congrega- 
tion : and they gathered themselves together against 
Moses and against Aaron. And the people chode with 
Moses, and spake, saying. Would God that we had 
died when our brethren died before the Lord ! And 
Avhy have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord 
into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die 
there ? And wherefore have ye made us to come up 
out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place ?" 
IVow, as the Bishop quotes, " It is no place of seed, or 
of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates ; neither is there 
any water to drink." " Wherefore," says the Bishop, 
" the water from the rock did not follow them through 
the desert." Well, read on. " And Moses and Aaroii 
0* 



130 THE EXODUS. 

went from the presence of the assembly unto the door 
of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell 
upon their faces : and the glory of the Lord appeared 
unto them. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 
Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, 
thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the 
rock before their eyes ; and it shall give forth his water, 
and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the 
rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their 
beasts drink." The Bishop quotes the complaint, 
" there was no water ;" the rock therefore evidently did 
not follow them ; it is all a myth — a fabulous legend 
— incredible and subversive of the pretensions of the 
Pentateuch. The historic statement of Moses clearly 
demonstrates that there was j)lenty of food for man, 
and grass for the cattle, and abundance of water to 
drink. The Bishop of Natal has now time to read the 
chapter. If he will do so, he may discover that Dr. 
Colenso is still wrong, and Moses still right. Another 
edition of his work is about to come out. I believe it 
has already reached nearly twenty thousand. I hope 
the powerful battery that has been opened upon his ab- 
surdities, his inaccuracies, his misquotations, and his 
illogical fallacies, will lead him, through God's grace, 
to correct what he has written, and to repent of the 
shock he has so unwarrantably communicated to thou- 
sands in Christendom. 

But he follows up his attack still farther, and quotes 
a long and valuable passage from Canon Stanley, a man 



THE EXODUS. 131 

of piety and learning — we hope only slightly, if actu- 
ally, tinged with the characteristic views of what is 
called the broad school of theology. The Bishop says 
the whole peninsula of Sinai — of which you will find in 
Bagster's Bible some admirable maps ; in which maps 
you may easily trace the route of the Israelites — a 
route popularly and usually assumed to have been 
along the peninsula of Sinai, crossing the Red Sea at 
Suez, moving along the peninsula toward the Gulf of 
Elan, and thence northward to Canaan or Palestine. 
The Bishop quotes testimony from Canon Stanley, to 
the effect that the whole of that peninsula is so bleak, 
that it is utterly impossible — though Moses asserts it, 
if Moses ever was a living person — to suppose that 
cattle and sheep could have had herbage to eat, or 
could have found water to drink. Canon Stanley says : 
'' The wind drove us to shore — the shore of Arabia 
and Asia. We landed in a driving sand-storm, and 
reached this place, Ayun-Musa, the Wells of Moses. 
It is a strange spot, this plot of tamarisks, with its 
seventeen wells, literally an island in the desert^ and 
now used as the Richmond of Suez: — a comparison 
which chiefly serves to show what a place Suez itself 
must be. Behind that African range lay Egypt, with 
all its wonders — the green fields of the Nile, the im_ 
mense cities, the greatest monuments of human poAver 
and wisdom. On this Asiatic side begins immediately 
a wide circle of level desert^ stone^ and sand^ free as air, 
but with no trace of human habitation or art, where 



132 THE EXODUS. 

they might wander, as far as they saw, for ever and 
ever. And between the two rolled the deep waters of 
the Red Sea, rising and falling with the tides, which, 
excejDt on its shores, none of them could have seen — 
the tides of the great Indian Ocean, nnlike the still, 
dead waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The day after 
leaving Aynn-Musa was at first within sight of the blue 
cliannel of the Red Sea, but soon Red Sea and all were 
lost in a sand-storm, which lasted the whole day, (I 
have retained this account of the sand-storm, chiefly 
because it seems to be a phenomenon peculiar to this 
special region. Van Egmont, Xiebuhr, Miss Martineau, 
all noticed it ; and it was just as violent at the passage 
of a friend in 1841, and again of another, two months 
after ourselves, in 1853.) Imagine all distant objects 
lost entirely to view — the sheets of sand floating along 
the surface of the desert, like streams of Avater, the 
whole air filled with a tempest of sand, driving in your 
face like sleet. We were undoubtedly on the track of 
the Israelites ; and we saw the spring which most 
travelers believe to be Marah, and the tvv^o valleys, one 
of which must almost certainly — both, perhaps — ^be 
Elim. The general scenery is either immense plains 
(^. e., hare and IjaTren idlains of sand^ as described be- 
low), or, latterly, a succession of watercourses (without 
loater^ see below), exactly like the dry bed of a Spanish 
river. These gulleys gradually bring you into the 
heart of strange black and white mountains. For the 
most part the desert teas absolutely iare. But the 



THE EXODUS. 133 

two rivals for Elim are fringed with trees and shrubs, 
the first vegetation we have met in the desert. First, 
there are the wild palms, successors of the ' threescore 
and ten,' not like those of Egypt or of pictures, but 
either dwarf — that is, trunkless — or else with savage, 
hairy trunks, and branches all disheveled. Then there 
are the feathery tamarisks, here assuming gnarled 
boughs and hoary heads, on whose leaves is found what 
the Arabs call manna. Thirdly, there is the wild 
acacia; but this is also tangled by its desert growth 
into a thicket — the tree of the burning bush and the 
shittim wood of the tabernacle. A stair of rock brought 
us into a glorious wady, inclosed between red granite 
mountains, descending precipitously upon the sands. I 
can not too often repeat that these wadys are exactly 
like rivers, except in having no water ; and it is this 
appearance of torrent bed and banks, and clefts in the 
rocks for tributary streams, and at times even rushes 
and shrubs fringing their course, which gives to the 
lohole wilderness a doubly dry and thirsty aspect — 
signs of ' Water ^ water every where^ and not a drop to 
drink,'' " 

Well, I have read two or three most excellent replies 
to these objections, which I cordially recommend, be- 
cause I do not Avant you to take my opinion, as if it 
stood alone. A most pithy reply is written by a friend 
of mine, Mr. Saville. A very able reply lias been writ- 
ten by Mr. John CoUyer Knight, of the Britisli Museum. 
One of tlie most remarkable, and to me most original, 



184 THE EXODUS. 

and containing much suggestive matter, has been -writ- 
ten by Dr. Beke, a member of the Geographical Soci- 
ety, a competent antiquarian and geographical scholar. 
He thinks, what is important, as coming from so good 
a judge, and states in his letter to the Bishop of Natal, 
" Now, in the first place, I can not admit that you have 
satisfactorily controverted Canon Stanley's argument 
that, during the ages which have elapsed since the Ex- 
odus, considerable changes have taken place in the phy- 
sical condition of the Sinaitic peninsula. On the con- 
trary, I believe that very great changes have taken 
place, and that formerly the peninsula was far less in- 
hospitable and barren than it is at the present day. 
Without entering into any lengthened details, I will 
adduce a few instances to show that such must be the 
case. While writing these lines, I read in The Times 
newspaper of the 31st of October, that the British 
Consul at Jedda, on the Arabian coast of the Red Sea,, 
reports that the sea on that coast is gradually receding, 
owing to the formation of coral reefs ! This must be 
understood to mean, that the coral reefs formed along 
the coast are being brought above the surface of the 
sea by a gradual rising of the land, offering to the eye 
of an ordinary observer the appearance of the recession 
of the sea itself. Along the African coast of the Red 
Sea, the like phenomenon has been observed by myself 
and other travelers. And if we consider the statements 
of Herodotus resjDecting the primeval condition of 
Egypt, and that of Artemidorus, to tlie effect that a 



THE EXODUS. 135 

branch of the Astaboras, the Nile of the Ethiopians, 
sent part of its waters into the Red Sea, near Ptole- 
mais Theron ; and if further, we compare Claudius 
Ptolemy's description and map of the Upper Nile and 
its principal tributaries with the actual courses of those 
rivers, we must feel convinced that the same operation 
of nature has been going on during ages. On the east- 
ern side of the Arabian peninsula, likewise, the Persian 
Gulf has for many years past been known to be rapid- 
ly becoming shallower and more limited in extent. 
Hitherto, the geological changes in those regions ha.ve 
not attracted the notice they deserve ; but when the 
attention of geologists shall be directed to them, I have 
no doubt of their adopting the opinion, that within the 
historical period, those changes have been of sufficient 
amount to affect materially the physical form and con- 
dition of all those countries." 

This reply to the Bishop is complete ; for what is the 
Bishop's assumption ? That in the year 1863, the pen- 
insula of Sinai, through which the Israelites passed, is 
bleak, desert, inhospitable, barren, and a mass of rocks ; 
ergo^ says the Bishop, Avith a leap over 3,000 years — 
which is a very wide leap indeed — there was no food 
3,000 years ago for the cattle of Israel. But Dr. Beke 
says, what Canon Stanley also hints, that there is rea- 
son to believe that the desert is not now Avhat it was 
then ; therefore before the Bishop can use the present 
deserted and bleak condition of tlie peninsula of Sinai 
as an argument against the historic truth and veracity 



136 THE EXODUS. 

of tlie Word of God, he must be prepared to prove 
that the peninsula of 1863 is precisely what it was 3,000 
years ago. But that great changes have passed on 
Eastern lands may be proved by referring to the state 
of Palestine. What is the picture of Palestine in the 
Word of God ? A land overflowing with milk and 
honey, a land so rich and so beautiful that it was the 
most lovely, and the most beautiful, and the most fer- 
tile of all lands. It was so upwards of 2,000 years ago. 
What is the condition of Palestine now ? Read La- 
martine or Chateaubriand on Palestine, — the most ex- 
quisite and poetical, yet historic and true descriptions 
that I know. What do they describe ? Cloven rocks, 
burning sands, little stunted bits of corn, so stunted 
and so precarious that the sow^er never can calculate 
upon being the reaper ; the hoof of the Arab steed on 
the hot sand ; the tent of the Bedouin in the desert ; 
the burning sun ; a sky as brass ; and a jDarched earth 
cloven, as it thirsts for the early and the latter rains, 
and does not receive them ; constitute the existing con- 
dition of Palestine. Chateaubriand says, "A soft and 
chalky earth, which has been formed by the gradual 
wasting away of the calcareous rocks, sw^allows up our 
footsteps. This portion of the country is so shocking- 
ly barren, that it does not possess even the semblance 
of a bit of moss. One can only discover here and there 
some tufts of thorny plants, as pale as the soil that 
produced them, and covered with dust, like the trees 
on the sides of our highways during summer. The 



THE EXODUS. 137 

mountains present the same appearance, clothed in 
white dust, without a shade, without a tree, destitute 
of herbage, and not even possessing a scrap of moss." 

"We perceived Jerusalem through an opening in 
the mountains. I did not at first know what it was. 
I believed it to be only a mass of shattered rocks. The 
sudden apparition of this city of desolations m the 
midst of such wasted solitudes, had something about 
it fearful. She was the Queen of the Desert." 

Here is a parallel case. Two thousand years ago, 
Palestine was all that beauty, fertility, and climate 
could make it, or heart of inhabitant could desire. But 
in the present day it is a bleak, barren, wasted desert. 
Might not the Bishop have thought, if such a change 
has taken place in the case of Palestine, that it is neith- 
er singular nor solitary if the peninsula of Sinai has 
experienced a parallel deterioration ? His reasoning is 
worthless, and his objections frivolous. At all events, 
the Bishop must prove that the peninsula of Sinai, 
unlike Palestine, exists to-day as during the Exodus ; 
and to do this he must get over the facts adduced by 
Dr. Beke as well as those of Canon Stanley. 

I will not detain the reader too long with those crit- 
ical discussions, I will adduce what I think is the most 
conclusive evidence that the Mosaic record is liistori- 
cally true and inspired — the coincidence, the marvel- 
ous coincidence between the fiicts and phenomena re- 
corded tliere, and their moral, spiritual, practical, and 
23lainly intended application to the hearts and conseien- 



188 THE EXODUS. 

ces of all mankind. But, before I do so, I must notice 
one remaining objection. The Bishop objects, at page 
48, in the strongest terms, to the statement about the 
Exode in Exodus xiii. 18, where we read — " The child- 
ren of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of 
Egypt." His objection is, "It is inconceivable that 
these down-trodden, oppressed people should have 
been allowed by Pharaoh to possess arms, so as to 
turn out at a moment's notice 600,000 armed men. If 
such a mighty host — nearly nine times as great as the 
whole of Wellington's army at Waterloo, (69,686 men, 
Alison's History of Europe^ xix. p. 401) — had had arms 
in their hands, would they not have risen long ago for 
their liberty ?" He forgets that the precise number of 
years of their captivity were settled, and settled by 
God ; and against His decree their rebellion would 
have been like the waves of the sea rising in insurrec- 
tion against the rooted and eternal rocks. " Or, at all 
events, would there have been no danger of their 
rising ?" His objection lies against the statement that 
the Iraelites went forth 600,000 men, fully armed with 
swords, with bows, with bucklers, and all the weapons 
of ancient war. Our answer is complete. The word 
" harnessed" in the Hebrew does not mean universally 
or necessarily, possessed of offensive arms. The He- 
brew word, as shown in numerous instances, denotes 
simply that they went out, in order, in array, as the 
Romans would say, accincti^ not a disorderly mob, but 
as a regiment, corps, or battalion ; w^hether with arms, 



THE EXODUS. 189 

or without arms, is not in question ; it means in perfect 
array, without confusion or disorder of any sort. And 
there are many hints scattered throughout Exodus that 
when war actually occurred it was a selection of pick- 
ed men, and not the 600,000 who Avere called upon to 
do battle. But in this instance, too, the Bishop, from 
his long residence among the African Zulus, who al- 
most made a convert of him, must have forgotten the 
common iisus loquendi^ or habit of speech, in modern 
times. If the electric telegraph were to bring news 
to-morrow (and it may bring the news some day) 
France has universally armed, of course our cabinet 
would instantly see that the Guards and the different 
regiments were all prepared to do — what they will al- 
ways be ready to do^ — their duty. But at the same 
time I do not think that Lord Palmerston would ever 
imagine that France's arming meant that the thirty- 
six millions that constitute the population of that 
country had each shouldered an Enfield rifle, and that 
the whole were prepared to come down like an ava- 
lanche upon England. N^obody but the Bishoj) of Na- 
tal could so understand the telegraphic communication. 
We should suppose that a nation acting in this way 
meant a nation acting through its constituted and re- 
cognized right arm — its soldiers. Therefore, when it 
is said that the children of Israel Avent out from Egypt 
into the desert armed, taking the Hebrew word Avhich 
we have translated "harnessed" in its most Imiited 
sense, all that it can mean is, that they went out with 



1-iO THE EXODUS. 

a sufficient guard, Tvith a sufficient body of defenders, 
brave men, able to do battle with Pharaoh in the des- 
ert, and to defend their wives and their cliildren, their 
tents and chattels, and all that they carried with them. 

Having noticed these difficulties of the Bishop, I 
look at the great moral lessons that this must suggest 
to us all. First, it is said that the Israelites, as they 
marched out of Egy|Dt, went out in haste. They felt 
they had long enough endured its burdens, toiled in its 
kilns, and eaten its bitter bread ; and the instant that 
the announcement was given, or rather that the word 
of command was addressed to Moses, the leader of the 
hosts of Israel, not in confusion or dismay, but organ- 
ized and disciplined, they marched in haste into the 
desert, and toward the land of Canaan. When the 
order comes from the great Captain of the Faith to 
come out of this world in which we are, of which we 
are not, will you be prepared to say '' Lord, now let- 
test thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes 
have seen thy salvation'' ? 

But Ave read that when the Israelites went out in 
haste, the Egy[)tians, so far from interfering with theii' 
march, felt so keenly the last blow that had been struck 
in their homes, on their first-born throughout the whole 
land, that they hurried the Israelites out, saying, '* TTe 
be all dead men,'' and they were too thankful to get 
rid of them as fast as possible. Our sias should drive 
us from ourselves ; Christ's death, Christ's love, Christ's 
promises, Christ's care should wean and win us to Him- 



THE EXODUS. 141 

self. Thank God, that many an Egyptian trouble beats 
upon us and impels us ; thank God, that many a glo- 
rious promise attracts us to Immanuel's land. 

It is said, in the next place, that the instant the Is- 
raelites had made up their minds to go, they " borrow- 
ed" of the Egyptians jewels, and raiment, and gold, 
and trinkets. The Bishop finds fault with this as in- 
credible ; but it is worthy of notice here, that the He- 
brew word which our translators have translated " bor- 
rowed," literally and almost universally means asJced^ 
not iorrowed. The Bishop says it is very unlikely that 
the Egyptian ladies would have given up their trinkets, 
or that they had such trinkets to give. But in the In- 
ternational Exhibition, you may have seen the jewels 
of an Egyptian lady of great rank, who lived nearly 
3,000 years ago, in the right-hand gallery of the main 
nave ; exquisite golden trinkets, of beautiful workman- 
ship and shape, about 3,000 years old, probably similar 
to the very jewels which the Israelites asked from the 
Egyptians. There is a moral jewelry more splendid 
and magnificent than all the jewelry of India or of the 
East. An angel in the Apocalypse was struck with a 
spectacle such as he had never seen before — he sees a 
great multitude climbing up the starry steeps of hea- 
ven ; arrested by their magnificence, he asks the inter- 
preting angel, "Who are these that are arrayed in 
white robes, and whence came they ?" Angels may at 
this moment be the spectators of believers pei-forming 
a grander exode, climbing yet nobler steeps, and clad 



142 THE EXODUS. 

with white robes, and covered with jewels that glisten 
in the rays of an unsetting sun that by their splendor 
put out all the stars ; and angels may ask concerning 
that jDOor woman, in that underground cellar ; of that 
poor afflicted old man, in that garret, of whom the 
world says, How filthy, how poor, how wretched, how 
repulsive ; " who are these arrayed in white robes ? 
whence this splendor ?" '' These are they that came 
out of great tribulation ;" out of garrets and under- 
ground cellars ; out of dirt, and rags, and poverty, and 
dungeons ; but " they have washed their robes, and 
made them white in the blood of the Lamb ; and there- 
fore they are before the throne of God, and they serve 
Him day and night without ceasing." " When I pass- 
ed by thee none eye pitied thee, none had compassion 
iij)on thee; and when I passed by thee, and looked 
upon thee, it was the time of love. I sjDread my skirt 
over thee, and covered thy nakedness. I washed thee 
with water; I clothed thee with broidered work; I 
shod thee with badger's skin ; I girded thee with fine 
linen. I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put 
bracelets upon thy hands, and a chain on thy neck. 
And I put a jewel on thy forehead, and ear-rings in 
thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head. 
Thus wast thou decked with gold and silver, and thy 
raiment was of fine linen, and thy renown went forth 
among the heathen, for thy beauty ; for it was perfect 
through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, 
saith the Lord God." 



THE EXODUS. 143 

Another lesson is suggested here. This great multi- 
tude marched forth from the city of Rameses to Suc- 
coth, numbering, we are told, upward of two millions 
of people. What a startling exodus. That passover 
angel, when he spread his wing, and swept through 
Egypt, opened all the gates of Egypt, paralyzed all 
the subjects of Pharaoh, and let forth out of every 
dungeon, and cellar, and garret, that mighty host of 
captives, so recently toiling in the brick-kilns, now the 
heirs of a glory that should not fade, and of an inher- 
itance that should not pass away. Then was partly 
fulfilled what was promised to Abraham, that his seed 
should be countless as the stars, innumerable as the 
sands by the sea ; and they did not retreat nor succumb 
until they crossed the ocean, and in the beautiful lan- 
guage of the fifteenth of Exodus, Miriam touched her 
harp, and celebrated the triumph of the Lord in the 
depths of the sea, and Moses sung that song which is 
called in the Apocalypse the song of Moses and the 
Lamb ; and Israel learnt, " Not by might, nor by 
power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." 

We are told that precisely at the end of the four 
hundred and thirty years, predicted as the length of 
their captivity, God's people Israel, that very same 
night, marched forth from Egypt. Here is the exact 
and literal fulfillment of God's Divine prediction. May 
we not suppose that there is here something like a war- 
rant, not for dogmatizing, but for investigating tlie 
dates that relate to our future also ? May not some of 



144 THE EXODUS. 

the wise and instructed Israelites, having read that 
God told Abraham that his children should sojourn 
430 years in Egypt, have investigated the number of 
years they had spent in Egypt, and thence calculated 
hoAv near they were to the exhaustion of the 430 years ? 
And might they not have said to the men of the brick- 
kilns, and the brick-makers in the fields, " Dear Breth- 
ren, lift up your heads, your redemption drawethnigh ?" 
This is all that students of prophecy attempt to do. 
If it be true that the great epochs of prophetic chron- 
ology are rapidly exhausting, and that we are every 
day approaching nearer to the end that will solve and 
explain them all ; . that we are already at the Saturday 
evening of the world's long and weary week ; is it a 
great crime on their jDart to say to God's jDeople, groan- 
ing under Egyptian bondage — in the world, not of it 
— weary, sorrowful, poor, oppressed, often at their 
wits' end, always passing through great tribulation. 
Dear brethren, lift up your heads, the hour of your 
magnificent exode is at hand, the day of your glorious 
deliverance dawns — a day when you will exchange the 
brick-kilns of Egypt for the mansions of your Father's 
house, and the oppression of the tyrant for the liberty 
wherewith Christ makes His people free ? 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE BIBLE AND MODEEI^ SCIEI^CE. 

I WILL endeavor to show how scientifically ignor- 
ant the Bishop of ISTatal is, when he maintains that 
the discoveries of science are incompatible with por- 
tions of Scripture, and how scientifically correct the 
Scripture is wherever, in its notice of outward phe- 
nomena, it touches the confines of science. It is no 
doubt true the Bible was not written or intended to 
teach science. If we wish to be informed on geol- 
^qJ^ ^^ must read the works of Sir Roderick 
Murchison, Professor Sedgwick, Hugh Miller, and 
other competent expositors of that science. If you 
wish to be informed on the subject of astronomy, 
you must read the productions of Herschel, Sir Isaac 
Newton, Madler, the Russian astronomer, and others 
who have distinguished themselves by their researches 
in the sky, and their accomplishments in that field. 
But if we wish to find the way to heaven, we must 
read the writings of Moses, of Isaiah, of Ezekiel, of 
St. Matthew, of St. Paul, or of "Moses and the pro 
phets," the Gospels, and the Epistles. At the same 
time the Bible records, covering a period of nearly 
2,000 years, must necessarily refer to many a phe- 
nomenon in nature which science has unfolded and 
1 



146 THE BIBLE A^B 

defined. But, instead of modern science conflicting 
with Moses and the prophets, it will be found that 
wherever Moses or the writers of the Old Testament 
allude to phenomena in heaven or earth, or speak of 
the action of cause and effect in the outer world, the 
language employed is invariably scientifically exact. 
And hence my inference is, that babblings and op- 
positions of science, falsely so called, not true science, 
may be quoted as opposed to the claims of Scripture ; 
but that true science, in its latest and most brilliant 
discoveries, with unhesitating voice proclaims, " Thy 
word, O God, is truth." 

In this lecture I will bring forward illustrations 
of this, at least a few, as specimens of many that 
might be adduced, did space permit, and the occa- 
sion require it. 

I will go back to the very earliest Mosaic records. 
It is stated unquestionably, in the opening chapter 
of Genesis, that light existed before the sun. A 
portion of the language of the opening chapter of 
Genesis, Longinus, an eminent rhetorician, pronounced 
the sublimest sentence in any language, or in any 
book : " And God said. Let there be light ; and there 
was light." But, after the creation of light, we find 
it stated that the work of the fourth day Avas, " Let 
there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to 
divide the day from the night ; and let them be for 
signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years. 
And God made two great lights ; the sun, the greater 



MODERN SCIENCE. 147 

light, to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the 
night." The usual objection is, how ignorant was 
Moses! He actually has the stupidity to state that 
there was light before the source of light was cre- 
ated ! Can any thing be mox'e outrageous than this ! 
But if so outrageous, would you expect a man of 
common-sense to perpetrate such an outrage ? If 
any of us had been writing about the source of light, 
we never should have dreamed of talking of light 
spreading over the earth its beautiful mantle, unless 
we had first stated or assumed the source of light — 
the sun in the sky. And therefore the very fact that 
Moses deliberately states there was light before the 
sun was appointed to give light is not the evidence 
of his ignorance, but a presumptive proof that theie 
underlies it a deeper and more glorious thought. 
Let us ascertain how modern science justifies Moses. 
In an admirable volume by Kurtz, a German writer, 
are set forth the links of connection between the 
profoundest astronomical discoveries and the most 
simple statements of the Word of God ; and what 
are the most recent results of modern scientific in- 
vestigation, lie shows that light is not necessarily 
dependent on the sun. Humboldt, in his " Cosmos," 
says — 

The northern light derives most of its importance from the fact 
that the earth becomes self-luminous, and shows itself in itself cap- 
able of developing light ; and the intensity of the terrestrial light, 
in cases of the brightest radiation toward the zenith, is resembled 



148 THE BIBLE AND 

by the light of the moon in its first quarter. Occasionally printed 
characters are read by this polar light without difficulty. 

Wagner, another German writer, speaking of the 
northern light, and the natives of the northern parts 
of Scotland, especially the Orkney and the Shetland 
Isles, must be able to confirm what he says : — 

The northern light being an intermitting phenomenon, and ex- 
hibiting to us the change from light to darkness, independent of the 
sun, we may find in it an analogy to similar changes occurring upon 
the earth before the creation of the sun. 

And lastly, Schubert, quoted by Kurtz, says : — 

May not that polar light, which is called the aurora of the North, 
be the last glittering light of a departed age of the world, in which 
the whole earth was inclosed in an expanse of aerial fluid, from 
which, through the agency of electro-magnetic forces, streajned 
forth an incomparably greater degree of light, accompanied with 
animating warmth, almost in a similar mode to what still occurs 
in the luminous atmosphere of our sun ? 

Now, here is the very singular fact, that toward the 
northern regions, around the pole, we discover a per- 
petual light, having no dependence on, or connection 
with the sun. The inference of these able scientific 
men is, that such polar light is the last lingering 
memorial of a pre-Adamite world, or at least of our 
world before the work of the fourth day, when the 
sun was appointed to rule the day, and the moon to 
rule the night. And if so, it Avould justify what 
geologists have noticed, tliat many of the fossil re- 
mains of extinct species and genera have eyes that 



MODERN SCIENCE. 149 

indicatex suscej)tibility of light, and must have lived 
where there was light. Therefore w^e argue from 
the remains of the polar light shining independent 
of the sun, so bright that printed letters can be read 
in it, that there has been a light, in all probability, 
long before the sun's body was created, as well as 
long before the sun's present office was appointed ; 
and that that light began when God said, " Let 
there be light, and there was light." 

Having given the scientific reply, which to my 
mind is most conclusive, I must notice a distinction 
of very great importance. When it is said in the 
passage I have read, or rather referred to, from 
Genesis, "Let there be light," the Hebrew word 
is lij*. 

" And God said, Let there be light 'li^^ {oivr) ; and 
there was light." But in the record of the work of 
the fourth day we read, ''And God made two great 
lights," it is in the Hebrew — D^^rib^^. b5;[>i n'ni^^n '^:?;"n^ 
(veaasa JSlohim eth-shenei hammaaroth) ; A^'llere the 
word used is not hara^ ' created,' but aasa^ ' consti- 
tuted,' and the word for light is not owr^ light, as in 
verse 3, but maaroth^ which means light-carriers or 
bearers. God, as recorded in Genesis, on tlie fourlli 
day did not create tlie sun, for the body of the suu 
may have existed millions of years before, but con- 
stituted, or set tlie sun and the moon to bo link-car- 
riers, light-bearers, in order to ilUnninate the inliab 
itants of this globe ; in otliur words. He did not 



150 THE BIBLE AND 

first create the sun and the moon on the fourth day, 
but He so constituted them on that day that towards 
our economy they sustained a definite mission to re- 
flect what He had created three days befi^re, light 
upon a world that otherwise would have been in 
darkness. 

Where it is said, He made the sun and the moon, 
it has been urged as an objection that He is said to 
make the '' stars " also. Now, we can demonstrate 
that the fixed stars are vastly older than the globe. 
For instance, a star of the twelfth magnitude must 
have existed 4,000 years. The way we calculate is 
this : Light travels with tremendous velocity. I am 
about to state perhaps w^hat seems a truism, and not 
necessary to be told to men who have read upon this 
subject, but I must do so for the sake of the ignorant 
or less instructed, to w^hom the objections of Dr. 
Colenso are directed. We know that light travels 
with a velocity so great, that it takes a ray of light 
only eight minutes to travel from the sun to this 
earth ; so that if you look upon the sun at noonday, 
at twelve o'clock, you do not see the sun as he is at 
that moment, but as he was eight minutes before — 
the light taking that time to travel. Now, it can be 
proved that there are stars of the twelfth magnitude 
whose light would take about 4,000 years to travel 
to our earth ; and there are stars that have been 
demonstrated by Herschel to be so distant, that a 
ray of light has been traveling from them for millions 



THE BIBLE AND 151 

of years, and it has only reached our earth within the 
last few years. I^ow, if that he the case, then we 
know that these stars must have existed millions of 
years before. Then what is meant by Moses saying, 
" He made the sun and the moon to be light bearers, 
and the stars also ?" The answer is, the last words 
are simply a supplemental remark. He made the sun 
and the moon to sustain a definite relation to our 
world and the stars ; for he is speaking not of crea- 
tive acts, but of relative uses. "He made the sun 
and the moon to be lights, and the stars also." But 
if it should be said that this seems to imply that He 
then created the stars, I answer, Job, probably as old 
as Moses, and whose writings on those eastern plains 
of Shinar are so rich and beautiful, and full of thought, 
expressly states that the stars existed when this earth 
was created ; for he tells us in his 38 th chapter, at the 
4th verse, '' Where wast thou " (God is the speaker) 
'' when I laid the foundations of the earth ; wlien 
the morning stars sang together ?" — the idea being 
that the morning stars were present, spectators of 
the creation of our orb, and were not created on tlie 
fourth day, but constituted in their relation to be 
light reflectors to the world that now is. Tlic heav- 
enly bodies bear traces of being created opaque, and 
subsequently being made luminous, or light-giving. 
How does the sun give light ? The most recent dis- 
coveries are, that the body of the sun is just what 
the language of Moses would lead us to conclude — 



152 MODERN" SCIENCE. 

a dark, or opaque body, and that the way he gives 
light is by a himinous atmosphere. So that we infer 
from the language of Moses precisely what is the de- 
duction of modern science, that God on the fourth 
day gathered up the scattered light, leaving about the 
pole a dim memorial of its existence, concentrated 
that light in the sun, and made the sun relatively the 
servant of our globe, by reflecting his light upon 
the world, and enabling man to read, walk, and work, 
and so mind the duties and fulfill the responsibilities 
of life. 

We also read that while God on the fourth day 
constituted the sun and the moon to divide the day 
from the night. He said also, '' Let them be for signs 
and for seasons." Ask the mariner upon the tem- 
pestuous and stormy ocean what he could do without 
his observations of the stars. The primeval decree 
of the Almighty is, that the stars shall be to the 
sailor on the ocean's bosom the means of determining 
his longitude, or his place upon the sea. So scien- 
tifically correct is Moses, so stupidly blundering are 
his opponents. 

In the 26th page of his introduction, the Bishop 
states, in a foot-note, his participation impliedly in 
great doubts whether man be not much older than 
6,000 years ago. The Bishop is the greatest living 
doubter upon earth. It is all doubts from beginning 
to end. The unhappy prelate breathes doubts, and 
eats doubts, and lives in doubts, till doubts seem to 



MODERN SCIENCE. 153 

be assimilated to, and incorporated with his very 
nature. He seems lo think it very doubtful whether 
man be only 6,000 years old. And, secondly, one of 
the writers of the " Essays and Reviews," Professor 
Jowett, a most accomplished scholar, and Professor 
of Greek in the University of Oxford, says, '' It is 
possible " (now, I say it is impossible) ; " and it may 
one day be known " (I say, that at the present day it 
is known to be the reverse) " that mankind spread 
not from one, but from many centres originally ;" 
that is, instead of one Adam and Eve, there may have 
been half-a-dozen scattered over the globe, each race 
having a distinct and independent primeval parentage. 
These are very grave and serious objections. My an- 
swers are not the product of my reasoning, but the 
conclusions of the most competent authorities. First, 
it has been stated by Augustine, one of the most 
evangelical and excellent of the Fathers, JVuUiwz est 
creaturce genus quod non in homine posset agnosci : 
" There is no kind of creature which might not be 
recognized in man." Umbreit, a German writer, 
says : " In the name of man lay the significant idea 
that he was the representative of the whole earth, 
comprehending it as its lord and ruler in his own 
form." Sir Charles Lyell, one of the most eminent 
geologists, says — and this is a conclusive answer : — 
" On grounds which may be termed strictly geolog- 
ical may be inferred the recent date of the creation 
of man." Professor Owen, a living eminent physio- 



154 THE BIBLE AXD 

legist and comparative anatomist, says, '• Man is tlie 
sole species of his genus, and the sole representative 
of his order.'' And Lawrence says, '• The human 
species is single, and all the differences which it ex- 
hibits are to be regarded as merely varieties." And 
Professor Owen says again, in opposition to Darwin, 
that '' There is furnished the confutation of the no- 
tion of the transformation of the ape into the man." 
Xobody nowadays, who understands the elements 
of oreolosfv, will denv that this earth is millions of 
years old — the histoiy in Genesis being merely that 
of the constitution of the dynasty of man, with all 
that relates to it. But we maintain that the first 
verse in Genesis precisely describes the great geolog- 
ical period. '• In the beginning" God created the 
heaven and the earth." 

'' In the beginning." When was that ? '• And the 
Word," says John, " was in the beginning," — i. e.^ 
eteniity. '' In the beginning God created the heaven 
and the earth." TThen about to introduce the dynasty 
of man, he tells us, by Moses, that at that period " the 
earth was desolation and emptiness." I may call it 
'• wreck and ruin," indicating a previous organized 
state, but, for some reasons we know not, then fallen 
into ruin. "'And the Spirit of God moved upon the 
face of the waters;" that is, '-And the Spirit of God 
kept fluttering like a dove on the face of the waters." 
Xow, remember the words, ''The Spirit descended 
upon Jesus like a dove," and you identify the Third 



MODERN SCIENCE. 155 

Person of the Trinity here indicated, as bringing all 
out of confusion. Then " God said, Let there be light, 
and there was light." IsTow, what we contend is, that 
whilst the great geological epochs demonstrate that 
this earth is millions — I use a rough and vague word 
— of years old, all geological induction demonstrates 
that man is not more than 6,000 years old. When I 
was adducing illustrations of the Flood, I brought il- 
lustrations of the occurrence of the Flood from sources 
that Bishop Colenso could not deny. I mentioned to 
you then, that, in what is called the drifts next to the 
alluvium^ which last belongs to man, and till we 
come to this last j)ortion of the earth geologists deny 
that there is a trace of man ; and the only trace of 
man is found upon the mere surface of the earth ; 
while the traces of the fish and of all the other races of 
creatures that once lived are found deep down in the 
different geological strata. So that, if we had not 
one word from Moses, and if Moses were altogether 
laid aside, we can demonstrate the untruthfulness of 
this statement, that man is of ancient origin, or that we 
sprang from difierent centers, or that he is above 6,000 
years old as a dynasty, the date of his introduction 
on our orb, according to the Scripture testimony. 

Having noticed these important truths, I turn to 
some of the minor incidental proofs of scientific accu- 
racy of statement contained in other parts of the Scrip- 
ture. Let us turn now to Leviticus. I read there, 
" The life of the flesh is in the blood." Where did 



156 THE BIBLE AND 

Moses get this information ? Were it possible to ask 
the most accomplished surgeons of the days of Escula- 
pius, they could give you no information. But every 
enlightened and intelligent surgeon of modern times 
will tell you that in the blood there is a living principle, 
and that the life of the body is derived from it. Hence 
the ablest medical man, when called to a patient, knows 
that the last thing he will do is to bleed his patient, be- 
cause he takes away the capital on which he works, 
and on which he can draw for that patient's recovery. 
Nothing but the direst necessity will compel him ; be- 
cause modern physiological and medical science has 
demonstrated that Moses, in Leviticus, stated what was 
an actual truth, wherever he got it, and however he 
learnt it, that the life is in the blood. 

In Deuteronomy xxxii. 2, we read, "My doctrine 
shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the 
dew." These words are not vaguely used. They hold 
the knowledge of the most exact and accurate science. 
He says, first of all, " My doctrine shall drop as the 
rain." How does the rain fall ? It drops. But what 
is a very recent discovery of the nature of the creation 
of dew ? You know that when spirits are formed it 
is the vapor that goes off from the boiling liquid or 
substance that is turned into spirit, condensed by cold. 
Rain drops ; that is literally and strictly true. How is 
dew created ? It is literally distilled. It is the con- 
densation of the watery vapor that floats near the sur- 
face of the earth. That was not known a hundred 



MODEEN SCIENCE. 157 

years ago. Then how did Moses know it ? He speaks 
in language most exact ; the rain drops, the dew is dis- 
tilled. The disclosure of modern observation is that 
the dew does not drop, that it does not fall from the 
clouds, that it is the condensation of watery vapor that 
floats upon the surface of the earth. Therefore Moses 
was scientifically right, and his objectors are scientifi- 
cally wrong. 

Let me give you another illustration of the same 
thing. In Psalm cxlvii. 16, we read, " Snow like wool ;" 
snow falling like wool. What is the meaning of this ? 
It can not be that snow falls in the shape of wool, for 
every body knows that snow-flakes do not assume the 
shape of wool. Then what can be meant by the Psalm- 
ist saying that snow falls like wool ? Snow is as es- 
sential to keep up in winter the warmth of the earth 
from which you expect to draw your future crops, as 
wool is to keep up the warmth of a sheep, and to main- 
tain it living on the hill-side. In other words, when 
the frost becomes so intense that all vegetable life 
would be extinguished, the snow, by a beautiful pro- 
cess, begins to fall, covers up the earth with its flakes, * 
and these flakes do for the earth precisely what wool 
does for a sheep — keeps ifc warm, or prevents it sink- 
ing to a temperature so far below zero that would be 
destructive to all vegetable life. Where did tlie Psalm- 
ist get this information that the snow is like wool, or 
why did he use an illustration that till within the last 
perhaps fifty or hundred years must have been thought 



158 THE BIBLE AND 

by superficial readers absurd and unnatural ? We an- 
swer that the Psalmist was scientifically right and his 
objectors are wrong. 

I turn, in the next place, to a very remarkable pas- 
sage in the Book of Ecclesiastes, full of instructive 
thoughts, and in the very first chapter, at the beginning. 
It is written there, "The words of the Preacher ; vanity 
of vanities ; all is vanity." Then the 5th verse, " The 
sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth 
to his place where he arose." Let me explain that in 
the 6th verse the word " wind " is really a mistake. In 
the Hebrew it is " he," referring to what he has been 
speaking of previously, the sun. In the Septuagint it 
is expressly stated, "the sun." So let us read the two 
verses again : 5th verse ; " The sun also ariseth, and 
the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he 
arose. The sun goeth toward the south, and turneth 
about toward the north ;" and then, " the wind whirl- 
eth about continually, and returneth again according to 
his circuits." Now, this language seems all perplexity 
and mystery till you remember the following facts. 
First, day and night are referred to by the appearance 
of the son above the horizon in his transit from the 
east unto the west, where he hasteneth. But in the 
next passage, " The sun goeth toward the south, and 
turneth about unto the north," we find the astronomi- 
cal truth, speaking popularly, stated of the annual 
course of the sun. Having spoken of his daily course 
from the east to the west, he now speaks of his annual 



MODEBN SCIENCE. 159 

course. For I need not state, except for the sake of 
some young readers, that while the earth has a motion 
on its axis, rotating in twenty-four hours, it has a mo- 
tion in his orbit, going over it in the course of 365^ 
days. Well now, having stated his rotating on its axis 
in twenty-four hours, he then explains its motion in its 
orbit ; namely, that the annual apparent course of the 
sun is through the twelve signs of the zodiac, advancing 
from the equinoctial southward to the Tropic of Capri- 
corn, from which he turneth about to the north imtil 
he reaches the Tropic of Cancer. So that in this very 
passage you have, first of all, a beautiful description of 
the earth's rotation on its axis, or day and night ; and 
you have, secondly, an exact scientific description of 
the sun marching apparently to us in his orbit, consti- 
tuting in that march the varied and the beautiful sea- 
sons which we all know. 

And then he adds, in the next place, "The w^ind 
whirleth about continually, and returneth again ac- 
cording to his circuits." What can be the meaning of 
this ? Ask Admiral Fitzroy, a very competent author- 
ity, whose signal drum at each seaport saves many a 
gallant mariner from a watery grave, and many a ship 
from shipwreck. We have been accustomed to think 
that when a gale of wind blows, it starts from a point, 
say south-west, and it blows in a direct line north-east. 
Now, that is the common popular notion, and it has 
been for hundreds of years the common po^^ular opin- 
ion. But what is the discovery of those who ha^^e 



160 THE BIBLE AND 

studied it ? That all storms are cycloidal, and that 
they come and strike in eddies and in circles, not in di- 
rect lines. In other words, they have discovered in 
the nineteenth century what Solomon stated 977 years 
before the birth of Christ, that " the wind whirleth 
about continually, and returneth again according to 
his circuits," his goings round ; in other words, the 
cycloidal direction of storms. 

Let me refer to another passage from this very chap- 
ter, again to show how scientifically correct is the lan- 
guage of Scripture. In the seventh verse he says, 
'' All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full ; 
unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither 
they return again." What is the meaning of this ? The 
answer is, the aqueous circulation ; only a recent sci- 
entific discovery. All the rivers, the Thames, the Mis- 
sissippi, the Missouri, the Danube, the Rhone, the 
Rhine, the Forth, the Dee, come from the sea ; and 
according to the language of Solomon here in this very 
passage, they not only all come from the sea, but they 
all run into the sea, and yet the sea is not full. The 
sun hovers over the ocean, which, with its bright, 
gleaming eye, ever looks up to him ; he exacts from 
the ocean a tribute of watery vapor by the fervor of 
his heat ; he gives the clouds charge of that watery 
vapor ; they carry it in their fleecy folds over many a 
broad acre and many a lofty mountain. When the cold 
chill of the air in its circuits touches them, the vapor 
is condensed ; just as if you apply a cold object to the 



MODERK SCIENCE. 163 

Steam rusliing from a tea-kettle, it will be condensed 
into water. The water falls uj)on the hills, the hills 
pom* down the waters in the shape of corries, as we 
call them in the Highlands ; these corries swell into 
streams, these streams into great rivers, these rivers 
pour into the ocean ; yet the ocean is not full, because 
it only receives what it originally gave. How literally 
exact is the language of the inspired writer. 

Let me turn to another passage, that you may see 
what outrageous nonsense some men speak against the 
Bible. In Job xxvi. 7, we read, "He hangeth the 
earth upon nothing." And this is not peculiar to Job ; 
similar expressions occur in various portions of the 
Old Testament Scriptures. Now, what is the opin- 
ion of the modern Hindoos ? It is this ; that the 
earth is a vast plain ; that there is an ocean of milk 
round it, then there is an ocean of wine, then there is 
an ocean of butter, then an ocean of something else ; 
but that it is one vast plain; and when they have been 
asked what it stands upon, they answer, upon an ele- 
phant. And what does the elephant stand upon ? 
Upon a tortoise. But what does it stand upon ? There 
they stop. Then what was the ancient notion of the 
most accomplished and gifted philosophers ? Plato 
thought that the earth was in a state of constant oscil- 
lation ; but how it was, or Avhat its support was, they 
barely imagined. Then I ask you, where did Job get 
what to Plato, and to Socrates, and to Aristotle, would 
have appeared as nonsense, what the Hindoo regards 



162 THE BIBLE AND 

as the very height of absurdity ; where did Job get this 
information that " He hangeth the earth upon noth- 
ing ?" The answer is, that the Eastern patriarch, if 
he did not know the great law of gravitation, at least 
has expressed himself by the inspiration of One that 
did know — precisely the disclosure of modem astro- 
nomical science — that the earth gravitates toward the 
sun, the central body, and that literally God has hung 
the earth upon nothing. 

Again, Job says, " He stretcheth out tne north over 
the empty place." Xow, we have na^^gators who have 
nearly reached the Xorth Pole, but they knew nothing 
of that. What is meant, then, by Job saying, " He 
stretcheth out the north over the em23ty place?" 
Why " empty place " associated with the north ? Sir 
John Herschel finds that the empty portion of the fir- 
mament, empty of stars comparatively, is at the Xorth 
Pole. But how did Job know that ? He that inspired 
liim taught him to express himself in language scien- 
tifically accurate and exact. 

Again, Job says, " He maketh weight for the winds." 
To a common mind, unacquainted with science, that 
would appear outrageous. Then how do you explain 
it ? I will exjDlain it by an incident. When Galileo 
was sent into prison because he had the impudence to 
say in the hearing of the Pope of Rome and the cardi- 
nals of that day, who, mind you, were infallible, that 
the sun did not go round the earth, but that the earth 
took the trouble of going round the sun, he was de- 



MODERN SCIENCE. 163 

nounced by infallibility as a heretic, he was sent to 
prison, and subjected to the most cruel treatment, be- 
cause he stated what Avas written long ago in the 
word of God, and what all science has since justified. 
But one day a person who was appointed to make a 
pump, in order to bring water out of a very deep well, 
came to Galileo, or rather was permitted to approach 
Galileo in prison, to ask him to explain how it came to 
pass that in this well which was only 40 feet deep, he 
could not get the pump to draw water so as to supply 
what the household required, as essential to its comfort, 
if not its very existence. Galileo said, " I believe it is 
owing, but I must not state it, or my imprisonment 
would continue, to the weight of the wind, or the 
weight of the atmosphere." And what is the fact ? 
That the atmospheric pressure is exactly equal to a 
column of water of 33 feet deep ; and that if you put 
a pump into a well 36 feet deep, it will not bring water 
up ; but if you put a pump into a well 30, or 29 feet 
deep, it will bring water up. Why ? Because the 
pressure of the atmosphere is equal to the weight of a 
column of water 33 feet deep. Galileo instantly guess- 
ed, or rather calculated, what must be true ; and that 
estimate of the astronomer in prison was a brilliant 
commentary upon Job on the plains of Shinar, " He 
maketh weight for the winds." So scientifically cor- 
rect is Scripture ; so scientifically wrong were the in- 
fallible cardinals and pope of that day. 

Let me mention another, perhaps a much smaller in- 



164 THE BIBLE AND 

Stance. In Job xiv. 8, we read, " Though the root 
thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die 
in the ground ; yet through the scent of water it will 
bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant." Now, a 
very recent discovery, and the result of microscopic in- 
spection, is, that the leaves of plants are respiratory 
organs, and in these leaves are vessels of secretion. 
And therefore the language of Job, that though the 
root has died, and though the stock thereof has failed, 
yet if there be leaves left, through the scent of water, 
the tree will bud again ; that is, strictly and botanically 
true. 

One of the prophets, Habakkuk, says, " Though the 
fig-tree shall not blossom." The language is peculiar, 
" Though the fig-tree shall not blossom." "What is the 
fact ? The edible fig is the blossom of the fig-tree ; 
and, in strictly scientific language, the receptacle con- 
taining a large number of minute unsexual flowers 
growing to a succulent base. The fig-tree has no blos- 
som ; or, rather, its blossom is the ^g ; and therefore 
the language of the prophet is strictly, beautifully, and 
scientifically exact. 

Let me quote another j)assage. In Job xxxviii. 31, 
we read, " Canst thou bind the sweet influences of 
Pleiades?" It long puzzled commentators to settle 
what could be the meaning of the influences of the 
Pleiades. Madler, a celebrated Russian astronomer, 
says, " I regard the Pleiades " — he is not speaking from 
a Scriptural point of view, but merely giving his inde- 



MODERN SCIEKCE. 165 

pendent conclusion ; a conclusion formed on scientific 
grounds, or rather on the use of his telescope, and with- 
out the least reference to the language of Job, — 

I regard the Pleiades as the central group to the whole astral 
system and the fixed stars, even to its outer limits, marked by the 
Milky Way ; and I regard Alcyone as that star of all others com- 
posing the group which is favored by most of the probabilities as 
being the true central sun of the universe. 

Job speaks of the attractions of the Pleiades ; the 
astronomer only the other day discovered that Alcyone, 
which is distant from us thirty-one and a half million 
times the distance of the sun from the earth, is in all 
probability a central sun. Who knows but there, 
throned in majesty, magnificence, and glory, may be 
He who made all, and without whom nothing was 
made that was made. At all events, we find, that 
while all the planets that constitute our solar system 
— the earth, the moon (its satellite), Jupiter, Saturn, 
Mars, and others are all revolving round the sun as 
their center, that our sun, with all his planets, and our 
earth among the rest, is but a tiny group amid thou- 
sands of vaster and more magnificent groups revolving 
round one central sun, Alcyone ; that sun the center of 
the astral system. And hence the very beautiful 
thought, so beautifully expressed by Job, is the most 
exact scientific discovery — a discovery made only 
within the last few years. 

Let me pass to another passage in Deuteronomy 



166 THE BIBLE AND 

xxxii. 24. I have put each down as I gathered, or 
found it out; I might have arranged them perhaps 
better, but the instruction is the same. In Deuteron- 
omy xxxii. 24, we find this strange language, " They 
shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burn- 
ing heat." Till recent discoveries in chemistry, it was 
matter of perplexity what could be meant by being 
told, " They shall be burnt with hunger." Burnt with 
fire we all understand ; but burnt with hunger seems 
altogether a mystery. But it expresses the most exact 
scientific truth. A man that dies of hunger is literally 
and truly burnt to death. You ask how ? "Why be- 
cause the atmosphere he breathes, containing oxygen 
— that substance that rusts iron by acting on it — if 
he does not take food, and therefore has no carbon fur- 
nished, which is necessary to constitute, by its contact 
with oxygen in the human lungs, the vital warmth of 
the human body, the oxygen acts upon the tissues, and 
upon the lungs themselves, and a man that dies of hun- 
ger is literally and truly burnt to death. That which 
is the most recent discovery of science was well known 
to Moses ; and yet this rash Bishop tells us that Moses 
did not know science, and that to expect that he would 
speak scientifically exact, is to expect what is extrava- 
gant and absurd ; and that he learnt in Natal a great 
deal more than Moses learnt from God Almighty. You 
yourselves can judge which speaks truth. 

I will take one more passage, and then close, not 
from want of others, but from want of space. It is in 



MODEKN SCIENCE. 167 

2 Peter iii. 10; in that memorable passage, which I 
have ilkistrated in my book, '•^Redemption Draioeth 
Nigh^'^ in connection with prophetic investigation. He 
tells us, " But the day of the Lord will come as a thief 
in the night ; in the Avhich the heavens shall pass away 
with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with 
fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are 
therein shall be burned up." Then in the 'Zth verse, 
" The heavens and the earth, which are now, by the 
same word, are kept in store, reserved unto fire ;" liter- 
ally translated, as Mr. Edward Bishop Elliot has show^n 
conclusively in his ''Horao Apocalypticae," "The earth 
that now is, being stored with fire, is reserved against 
the judgment and joerdition of ungodly men." N^ow, 
in what respect is this correct ? Will it be said by any 
one that the earth is stored with fire ? I once said, 
'' The earth seems a solid globe ; but there is reason to 
believe that the whole interior of our globe is one 
ocean of molten or liquid fire." This was attacked as 
being outrageous and absurd. I put the question to 
Sir Roderick Murchison, " Have you any reason to be- 
lieve that the interior of the earth is any thing like 
what I ventured to describe ?" Not having the know- 
ledge that he had, I was too happy to get the ojDinion 
of such a man. He said, " I infer from the increase of 
temperature in deep shafts, and also from former and 
present outbursts of igneous matter, that the existence 
of a central heat can not, in my opinion, be denied." 
Sir David Brewster, one of the most accomplished 



168 THE BIBLE AND 

l^hilosophers of the day, stated to the University of 

Edinburgh only last year, — ''Imprisoning under its 
elastic crust fire and water, and other elements of dan- 
ger, their explosive forces are exhausted in the earth- 
quake, and find vent in the volcano — the safety-valve 
of the great caldron which boils beneath our feet." 

And a very eminent geologist says that, to him, " It 
is a marvel that there is not a conflagration every day;" 
and the induction of all that have studied the subject 
is just Tvhat I ventured to state. Avrful thought! 
The very earth on which om^ houses, and our castles, 
and our banks, and our warehouses are built, is just a 
charged live shell. The mere surface, a few thousand 
feet in depth, is the shell ; but the interior, some ^7,000 
miles diameter, is one ocean of surging fire : and God 
has only to withdraw the repressive force, and the ele- 
ments shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth and 
the thiugs that are therein shall all be burned up. 

Let me also notice, in the next place, the expression, 
that ''the heavens," meaning the atmosphere, "shall 
pass away with a great noise." The moment that such 
a catastrophe shall take place, the result, from the 
imion of oxygen with hydrogen, and other gases liber- 
ated by intense heat, will awaken the most tremendous 
and overwhelming crashes, and sounds, and thimder, that 
ever reverberated in the universe. And when Peter 
says that " the elements shall melt with fervent heat," 
see how scientifically exact is the language of the Apos- 
tle. " Shall melt." The iron on vour streets is melt- 



MODEK]^r SCIENCE. 1 69 

ing. What is rust? — Burning. Every element has 
been burnt. Rust is simply the result of the oxygen 
of the air burning up the iron. If the Apostle had 
said, " The elements shall burn," every scientific man 
would have said, How ignorant Peter must have been ! 
Why, the granite has been melted already, it was once 
liquid. The iron, the gold that you find in the quartz, 
in the crevices and fissures of the rock, it has been 
melted already. And therefore, in language exactly 
scientific, Peter says, not they shall be burnt, but " they 
shall melt with fervent heat." 

ISTow, I will not dwell longer upon these, except to 
say that geology comes up from its secret recesses laden 
with its richest and its most recent phenomena, and 
says, " Thy word, O God, is truth." Astronomy comes 
down from sweeping through infinite space, weighing 
and counting the stars in their courses, and says, *' Thy 
word, O God, is truth." And the hearts and the con- 
sciences of Christendom, the thousands that the Bible 
has enlightened, the hearts it has cheered, the con- 
sciences it has pacified, the souls it has filled with hopes 
that can not die, say from their deepest experience, 
" Thy word, O God, is truth." It will be demonstrated, 
the longer that the world lives, how exactly the in- 
spired penmen wrote — how rashly a bishop and his 
followers have spoken. 

It is important to repeat that the Bible was neither 
meant nor inspired to teach geology, astronomy, or 

botany. These sciences rest on human observation and 
8 



170 THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

induction. But it is alike interesting and useful to no- 
tice that Scripture in none of its allusive references to 
natural phenomena does violence to what the telescope 
of the astronomer or the hammer of the geologist has 
disclosed, and that many of the expressions employed 
by the sacred penmen fully cover — if, indeed, they 
do not designedly contain — the ripest and most recent 
conclusions of scientific research. In this respect alone 
it stands high as heaven is above the earth — above 
and apart from the Shasters of India, the astrologies of 
Egypt, the astronomy of Ptolemy, or the cosmology 
of the Greeks. Science has nothing to fear from the 
Bible, and the Bible has nothing to fear from science."^ 

* See for scientific and monumental illustrations of Scripture an 
able work, entitled, " Science and Revealed Religion," by the Rev. B 
SaviUe. 



CHAPTER Vin. 

MOSES A PREACHER OF CHRIST. 

The author of the work on which in successive 
lectures I have made some strictures, regards Moses 
very much as a myth, or of doubtful existence, and 
if he did exist, that he did not write the Pentateuch ; 
and if he wrote any portion of the Pentateuch, it was 
a compilation of fables, traditions, stories, drifted 
along the currents of the world, which he worked 
up and pieced together after his own fancy, and ac- 
cording to his own taste. The Saviour, however, 
states (John v. 46, 47) that so intimately connected 
is belief in the divine legation of Moses, the ancient 
servant, with faith in Himself, the Lord, that the 
repudiation of such belief is logically followed by a 
rejected Lord, and a repudiated Gospel. Belief in 
what Moses wrote is distinctly and necessarily con- 
nected with faith in what Jesus is. If, then, Moses 
wrote fables, if he was a compiler of idle and un- 
historic tales, borne down on the traditions of this 
present world, how can we justify the Redeemer's 
words, how can we believe that " The Truth " ac- 
cepted testimony from a mere romancist; that the 
Prince of glory recognized a tale-writer as a wit- 
ness to his greatness and his mission ? The Bishop, 



172 MOSES A PREACHER 

like the Jew in the days of our Lord, rejects Moses ; 
and if his logic halts not in its march, it must neces- 
sarily lead him to reject Christ and Christianity. 
According to the Saviour's words. Genesis and Rev- 
elation, the Old and the Xew Testaments, are in- 
timately and inseparably linked together. Moses, 
the servant, and Christ, the master, bear definite 
and indestructible relations the one to the other. 
In his words the Redeemer recognizes Moses as a 
personal existence ; he recognizes certain writings 
also, for he uses the word " wrote " or " writings " 
as associated with the name and the pen of Moses ; 
and so recognizing them he recognizes the Penta- 
teuch as part of the inspired word of God. The 
Saviour asserts, "He wrote of me." If Moses was 
a collector of ancient and broken traditions, which 
had no foundation in fact, or in authentic history ; 
if his writings are no more historical than the " Pil- 
grim's Progress," or any similar book got up for in- 
struction, but not based on historic fact, how can we 
explain the Redeemer's words ? What sermon could 
the Bishop of Xatal preach upon these two texts, 
" He wrote of me." " If ye believe not his writings, 
how shall ye believe my words ?" So clearly has 
Moses written, so intelligible does his writing still 
remain, that the man who is most intimately versed 
in the writings of Moses will be the readiest to re- 
ceive the office, and the teaching, and the character 
of Jesus. 



OF CHRIST. 173 

In what sense or shape did Moses write of Him ? 
First, he must have received special inspiration from 
on high to be able to do so ; and, secondly, from 
distinct and expressive references contained in the 
New Testament scriptures and quotations from his 
writings and allusions to the symbols and types he 
employs, we learn that there is a gospel according 
to the Pentateuch, as true and as real as the gospel 
according to St. John, but not so clear, because life 
and immortality were not then so fully brought to 
light. 

Moses lived some 1,400 years before the birth of 
Christ. His writings had been in the hands, I might 
say, in the hearts, unquestionably in the homes of 
the Jews for upwards of a thousand years. And so 
clearly and cogently, according to the Saviour's own 
statement, did he write of Jesus, that if you will not 
receive the photograph you must reject the original. 
He who repudiates the inspired artist's creation, done 
1,400 years before, can not recognize the grand orig- 
inal, when he breaks upon the world like the sun in 
his morning brightness. Where then does Moses 
speak, or rather write of Christ ? If he does so at 
all, lie must have had celestial guidance to portray 
Avhat was not yet actual ; his pen must have con- 
ducted down an inspiration that directed him to 
record and sketch the likeness of the Son of God. 
Moses could not have seen Christ, for lie was not 
yet born in the llesh. lie could not have guessed, 



174 MOSES A PREACHER 

for the touches are too exact, the likeness too per- 
fect ; it is impossible to believe that Moses could 
have stumbled accidentally upon a picture which the 
more it is examined and compared with the grand 
original, turns out to be visibly more and more the 
impress of a divine and inspired guidance. The fact 
that Moses so wrote of Christ is proof that Moses 
must have been inspired. But what makes the dis- 
covery of the imposture possible and easy, if impos- 
tm-e there was, is the fact that "hei^ro^e," that the 
language of the Redeemer is ''his writings." Xow, 
had it been a floating tradition, handed from mouth 
to mouth along the successive generations of the 
Jewish people, it might have become brighter as the 
rising sun came nearer, and it might have been re- 
touched by the ingenuity of those that wished to 
show that the one was a prediction of the other. 
But we know that his writings existed in all their 
integrity, almost contemjDoraneously with the He- 
brew commonwealth. TTe know that nearly 300 
years before the birth of our Saviour, the Old Test- 
ament was translated into Greek, and in the Septu- 
agint form it exists at this moment, accessible to 
every one who can read that language. Moses 
therefore was committed to the issues of his ha^Ting 
written Avhat he believed to be the picture of Christ, 
and he left us the means of ascertaining how far he 
prophesied what was actual historic truth, or how 
far he drew upon his imagination for fanciful forms 



OF CHRIST. 175 

with which to charm a people, and create a wild 
and delusive hope which could not be realized. 
Take, therefore, the portrait of Jesus, as sketched 
by the pen ; or, if you like, drawn by the pencil 
of Moses ; and take the portrait of Jesus, as given 
in the gospel of Matthew, where we have one pro- 
file ; in Luke the opposite profile ; in Mark a three- 
quarter face ; in John the perfect fullness and the 
inner depths of that heart of hearts, and the infinite 
wisdom of One who spake as never man spake, and 
loved as never man loved. Take the full and perfect 
picture of Jesus sketched by the four Evangelists ; 
compare what Moses wrote with what they have 
written ; and if Moses did not sketch what is justi- 
fied by what they have written, then Moses was a 
false prophet ; and Bishop Colenso is right, and 
Moses is altogether wrong. 

I proceed to adduce the instances of allusion to 
Christ by Moses. I will here notice a very interesting 
fact ; I will not say an intentional prediction of the 
Saviour, but certainly a coincidence so vivid and re- 
markable, that I think it is not unlikely a prophecy. 
If we turn to the 5th chapter of the Book of Genesis, 
we shall find there the names of the antediluvian pa- 
triarchs, beginning with Adam and ending with Noah : 
in the 3d verse, Adam and Seth ; in the 6tli verse, Enos : 
in the 9th, Cainan ; in the 12th, Mahalalcel ; in the 
15th, Jared, or Tared ; in tlie 21st, Enoch ; in the 25th, 
Methuselah ; in the 2Gth, Lamech ; and in the last verse 



176 MOSES A PREACHER 

of all, Xoah. It is most remarkable, that if we trans- 
late these ten Hebrew names, from Adam to Xoah, we 
shall find that literally translated from the Hebrew, 
they are as follows: — Adam, "man in the image of 
God ;" Sheth, " substituted by ;" Enos, '' man in mis- 
ery ;" Cainan, " lamenting ;" Mahalaleel, " the blessed 
God ;" Tared, " shall come down ;" ^noch, '' teach- 
ing ;" Methuselah, " his death will send ;" Lamech, " to 
the humble ;" Xoah, " rest, or consolation." These 
names, designedly or undesignedly I can not venture 
to say, are laden with the most precious and distinctive 
truths of Christianity, and form a prophecy from the 
pen of Moses, of the nature of that sacrifice in which 
he trusted, and in which we glory. 

The next writing of Jesus to be found in the pages 
of Moses, is in the promise, "He," the seed of the 
vroman : not " she," as the Roman Catholics unhappily 
translate it in their translation from the Vulgate, The 
Hebrew pronoun is masculine, not feminine. In the 
Septuagint translation it is in the masculine gender 
also. And therefore the English authorized version 
gives the just translation ; " He," the seed of the wo- 
man, " shall bruise thy head," speaking to the serpent, 
"and thou shalt bruise his heel." Explain the words, 
and they mean this : that some one descended of the 
vroman should crush the head of, that is, vitally wound, 
the treacherous serpent, Satan ; and that this one who 
should thus crush the serpent's head, should in the 
achievement of the victory suffer partial and temporary 



OF CHRIST. 177 

crippling, if I may use the word, in his heel ; so that 
the ultimate march to victory and universality of the 
gospel of Christ should so far be impeded. That this 
was not a mere random prediction is plain from allu- 
sions to it in subsequent portions of the Book of Gen- 
esis. "In thy seed," the same, the woman's seed, 
" shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Again, 
in Genesis xii. 3, — " In thee," speaking of a person, 
"shall all families of the earth be blessed." Here, 
then, is the very first preaching of the gospel under 
the shadow of the walls of Paradise, and amidst the 
chill that fell upon two human hearts when sin disturb- 
ed the conscience, darkened the mind, and brought 
clouds in the sky, and mists upon the earth, and gave 
startling and impressive testimony that a great catas- 
trophe had overtaken the dynasty of man. Was this 
promise fulfilled ? It was that on which humanity 
kept afloat for 2,000 years before the deluge ; it was 
that to which the eyes and the hearts of Israel looked, 
and the world's gray fathers clung, amidst dreary and 
dark and desolate ages ; and it is that which the writ- 
ers in the jNTew Testament expressly justify as a pre- 
diction of the advent of Christ. For, in Galatians iv. 
4, it is written, " When the fullness of the time was 
come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman." 
But that text is inexplicable, unless in the hglit of 
what Moses wrote concerning Cln-ist. Again, Ave are 
told in 1 John iii. 8 : " The Son of God Avas manifested, 

that he might destroy the works of the devil." If we 
8* 



178 MOSES A PREACHER 

take these two texts, we shall find they are just the 
historic statement of the fulfilhiient of what Moses 
wrote, or rather what Moses records of what God said 
4,000 years and upwards before the Christian era. And 
what is a sort of collateral, though not in itself a reli- 
able proof of the reality of this allusion, is the fact 
that Voluey, the infidel writer, Avho had no taste and 
no love for authentic Christianity, reports, '^ There ex- 
ists a tradition every where in antiquity of the expect- 
ed conqueror of the serpent, a Di^-ine person, bom of 
a woman, who was expected to come.'' The ** Edin- 
burgh Review " says, '* The miraculous conception of 
the Great Deliverer was widely known in the world 
before the birth of Christ.*' The Grecian Hercules, 
half human, half divine, subduing the hydra by his 
strength, and dying by its poison, was a distorted 
caricature of the great Conqueror, or the great Bruiser 
of the serpent's head. The Indian or Hindoo incarna- 
tion of Deity, the virgin-born Krishna, slaying the ser- 
pent, and wounded by it in the heel, is another broken 
tradition of the same great truth. These distorted 
traditions, like the Polar light in Xorthern realms, in- 
dicate the setting of a light that once shone, and are 
in their measure predictions and earnests of a light that 
will yet rise, and shine from sea to sea, and from the 
river to the ends of the earth. Study, then, that prom- 
ise given by Moses of the woman's seed ; study the 
promise of what he is to do ; turn to the references 
found in the pages of the inspired writers of the Xew 



OF CHRIST. 179 

Testament, and we become sure that Moses wrote of 
Christ. If Moses then and there has recorded a mere 
fable, how will the Bishop justify St. Paul in stamping 
it with the impress of his authority ; how will he just- 
ify John in his epistle in referring to it as fulfilled in 
the Saviour's work ? How will he vindicate the Saviour 
himself ? 

I take a step farther. There is found in Genesis the 
indication of the time when the Saviour should be 
made manifest ; and that the Saviour, a man, and yet 
greater than man, for He was to do what man was un- 
able to do in innocence, should bruise the serpent's 
head. There is also given us a clue to the identification 
of the promised man ; for he tells us the time of his 
advent will be when the sceptre shall have departed 
from Judah, and a law-giver from between his feet. 
He says the Messiah shall not come till the scepter shall 
have departed from Judah ; that is, till Judah shall 
have lost its autonomy, or its independent self-govern- 
ment, and shall become a province of an empire, and 
tributary to a superior lord; and when Judah shall 
have no power of making laws irrespective of its for- 
eign ruler, and no one within its own bounds shall re- 
tain legislative functions, but merely the executive of 
laws made by the supreme Caesar; Judali being re- 
duced to the dimensions of a province. Does history 
justify the prophecy? We find that at the time the 
Saviour came, the decree of Augustus was accepted 
and recognized as a superior order to enroll the people ; 



180 MOSES A PREACHER 

that the current coin of the reabn bore the inicage and 
the sujoerscription of Ca?sar, and that the Jews them- 
selves admitted they had lost their autonomy, or power 
of independent self-government ; for they could not 
put any man to dccith, nor execute a crmiinal for the 
greatest crimes of which he might be guilty. I do not 
say that Moses gives liis birthplace ; but the prophets 
do ; Micah proclaimed that Bethlehem should be his 
birthplace. I notice one other trait given by Moses ; 
for I must restrict myself to the predictions contained 
in the writings of Moses, according to the Saviour's 
statement, '' he wrote of me." I quote from Deute- 
ronomy xviii. 15, these words : " The Lord thy God will 
raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, 
of thy brethren, like unto me ; unto Him ye shall 
hearken." Xow does this or does it not refer to the 
Son of God, the Saviour of simiers ? If it does not, 
then Stephen, the proto-martyi', died believing in a 
myth, and the Bishop is so far justified in saying that 
Moses did not testify of Christ ; for St. Stephen says, 
in Acts vii. 37, "This is that Moses, which said imto 
the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your 
God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me ; 
him shall ye hear." Peter repeats the same in Acts 
iii. 20, 22, where he dilates upon it; for he says, "And 
he shall send Jesus Christ, vrhich before was preached 
unto you ; whom the heaven must receive until the 
times of restitution of all things, which God hath 
spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the 



OF CHRIST. 181 

world began. For," laying the stress of the person- 
ality and of the advent of Christ upon a testimony in 
Deuteronomy, " Moses truly said unto the fathers, A 
prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of 
your brethren, like unto me ; him shall ye hear in all 
things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall 
come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that 
prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people." 

Let us also mark the confirmatory proofs of the 
same great fact in the constant allusions throughout 
tlie Gospels by those who themselves did not univer- 
sally believe in him as the Messiah. For instance, in 
Luke vii. 16, we read, "A great prophet is risen up 
among us." Again, in John vi. 14, " This is of a 
truth that prophet that should come into the world." 
Why the definite article, " that prophet ?" He means 
that prophet predicted by Moses. When John was 
interrogated, the people said to him, "Art thou that 
prophet ?" They had many ]Drophets ; why this spe- 
cific and definite reference to some one prophet in 
particular ? It was the Jew remembering the prom- 
ise on which his fathers had rested for many hundred 
years, and anxious to know if that promise liad been 
translated into fact, and had become personated in 
Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Again, the question is, 
''Art thou til at prophet which should come into the 
Avorld ?" Again, Jolm vii. 40 ; " Of a truth this is 
the prophet." Again, Matthew xxi. 11: "This is 
Jesus the propliet." Now all these passages most 



182 MOSES A PREACHER 

emphatically prove that those that did not receive 
Jesus as the Messiah, believed that these words were 
a prediction of a Messiah that was to be, and that 
those Avho Avere inspired of God, and competent to 
speak what was its reference, its significance, and its 
application, have said with one concurrent testimony 
that Moses thus spoke or wrote of Christ. 

I might show still farther the force of this by 
drawing, did space permit, a parallel between Moses 
and Christ. They were like in dignity, — " A prophet 
like unto me." The apostle says, " Moses verily was 
faithful in all his house as a servant ; but Christ as 
a son over his own house ; whose house are we." 
Moses was a legislator, and the mediator of a cove- 
nant ; Jesus is the Legislator, and the Mediator of a 
better covenant. The law of Moses was coextensive 
with the chosen nation ; the law of Jesus covers the 
area, and is coextensive with the whole population 
of the globe. Moses instituted the Passover ; led 
the people through the desert ; fed them miraculously 
with manna ; was their advocate and their intercessor. 
All these points might be worked out in detail, and 
the evidence brought irresistibly forth that Moses 
wrote of Christ, was therefore inspired when he did 
so, because only one guided by a supernatural light 
could portray One who was to apj^ear 1,400 years 
afterwards, " the light that lightens the Gentiles and 
the glory of his people Israel." In the words of Dr. 
Jortin, one of the most eminent divines of a former 



OF CHRIST. 183 

day in the Church of England, " Is this similitude 
and correspondence between Moses and Christ in so 
many particulars the effect of mere chance ? Let us 
search all the records of universal history, and see if 
we can find a man so like to Moses as Christ. If we 
can't find such a one, then we have found Him of 
whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, 
to be Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God." Here 
then you have another proof that Moses wrote of 
Christ. And again, I repeat, because in the day in 
which we live it is important to repeat it, that Moses 
must have been inspired ; that therefore what Moses 
wrote is not fable, is not tradition, is not unhisto- 
rical ; but sober, and authentic, and reliable history. 

The present day, I need scarcely add, is the era of 
reaction. It is the ebb-tide of a state that existed 
some fifteen or twenty years ago. Then the tide was 
flowing full and strong toward Rome, and the Pope, 
and Popish rites, and Popish ceremonies, and Popish 
doctrines, were quite the rage and the fashion. Such 
of us as denounced the tendency as incipient apostasy 
from the truth were of course set down as fanatics, 
ultra-Protestants, and fools. The tide now has ebbed 
away, and sets in fast into the Dead Sea. There is 
spreading in England, and in Scotland, and in more 
denominations than one, a sympathy with what is 
called Broad Churchism ; that means a cliurch so 
broad that it comprehends Christ, and Belial, and the 
Foj)e, and would comprehend Alahomet, I dare say. 



184 MOSES A PREACHER 

if it were sufficiently genteel. There is a disastrous 
tendency among many to grind down the distinctive 
truths of Protestant and evangelical Christianity. 
Now, just as I contended with all my might, how- 
ever feebly, against those that would corrupt these 
glorious truths by the addition of that which is hu- 
man, or by Popish traditions, so I would contend 
against those who would undermine and sap these 
glorious truths by denying the inspiration of their 
record, and ex]3laining them away. It is matter of 
thankfulness to God that in the Church of Scotland, 
and in the Church of England there are Articles, 
and Confessions, and Standards that remain, clear 
and decisive, and of no uncertain sound ; it is a grand 
fact, however some may dislike it, that those precious 
Articles and Confessions are part and parcel of the 
constitution of the land, and not subject to the oscil- 
lations of restless opinion. Therefore, how any one 
holding the sentiments of Bishop Colenso can possibly, 
for instance, sign the Thirty -nine Articles (than which 
I do not know a more precious testimony to vital 
truth, in opposition to deadly error), or the standards 
of any Church of the Peformation ; how that Bishop, 
for mstance, can go into the Church of England, and 
say, '' O God the Father, have mercy upon us ; O God 
the Son, have mercy upon us ;" for he must be an 
idolater if he means what he prays and yet believes 
Jesus not to be God ; for he can not believe that that 
Saviour was God who was not belter informed than 



OF CHRIST. 185 

cotemporaiy adults of his nation, and needed to grow 
in instruction just as they did and we do. But these 
old grand truths, these great and essential Protestant 
truths, are the truths to live by, and the only truths 
to die in. And depend upon it, what the Scottish, 
and English, and Continental Reformers excavated 
from the rubbish of Rome, and what those great men, 
the Puritans of England, preached — whether in the 
Church or out of it is of no consequence — this old- 
fashioned, evangelical, Protestant Christianity is sub- 
stance and life ; and depend upon it nothing will stand 
a death-bed, and a judgment-seat, or appease a trou- 
bled conscience, or comfort a desolate heart, short of 
these precious truths. The Holy Ghost has ins23ired, 
and the experience of ten thousand hearts has justified 
them as the wisdom of God and the power of God 
unto salvation. 

But I take a step farther in the direction in which 
I have been reasoning, and notice the remarkable 
words contained in Scripture, in Hebrews iv. 2 : "Unto 
us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them." 
The apostle" Paul says ihe gospel was preached to the 
Jews. In Galatians iii. 8, he says, "The Scripture, 
foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through 
faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham." In 
a book that I wrote, I spoke of " that eminent Christian, 
Abraham." Somebody sent me a weekly newspaper 
that made a half page of merriment at my expense, for 
talking of Christianity existing in the days of Abra- 



186 MOSES A PREACHER 

ham. My argument and my conviction, still undimin- 
ished, was, and is, that Christianity was cotempora- 
neous with the Avreck of Paradise ; that no sooner did 
man fall than God Himself became the evangelist, God 
Himself the text, God Himself the salvation of His 
ruined people. The gospel then was preached to Abra- 
ham, it was preached also to the Jews. And what 
was that gospel preached to them ? What is meant by 
the word gospel? Good news, glad tidings. Then 
Moses wrote and Moses preached the gospel to his co- 
temporaries, and in his writings to his own people that 
succeeded him. And what did he preach ? Everlast- 
ing life, the issue of the acceptance of Christ ci^ucified. 
" At thy right hand there is fullness of joy, and pleas- 
ures for evermore." I know that it is argued against 
the teaching of Moses, and as a disproof of his ever 
having taught the gospel, that he did not proclaim dis- 
tinctly a future state. I maintain he did. But so far 
as it was a theocracy, so far as he was the prime min- 
ister of Him who was the Divine Ruler, Moses enact- 
ed temporal laws for the punishment of temporal 
crimes. But in the magnificent predictions, in many 
of the hymns and divine songs, and certainly in the 
Psalms, one of which at least Moses wrote, we read of 
fullness of joy and pleasures for evermore at God's 
right hand. And the very words that Moses employs, 
describing the deaths of the patriarchs, imply and in- 
volve the reality of eternal life. Then they preached 
also in that day the way to eternal life through the 



OF CHRIST. 187 

shedding of blood ; they preached the necessity of 
fitness for it by taking away the heart of stone, and 
giving for it a heart of flesh ; and they showed by the 
most exquisite and expressive sculpture, by the most 
beautiful word-paintings, how a man was to be saved. 

Take the first — the cities of refuge. (Joshua xx. 
2-7.) A man killed another unawares. These cities 
of refuge were so distributed upon mountain heights 
throughout the length and breadth of Palestine, from 
the Mediterranean to the Jordan, and from Lebanon 
down to the Dead Sea, that wherever the homicide was, 
he could see, glistening in the rays of rising and set- 
ting suns, a city of refuge to which he might flee. If the 
avenger of blood, that is, the nearest relative of the 
party slain, overtook the homicide before he got within 
the city of refuge, he might kill him ; but if the homi- 
cide reached the city of refuge, the man that pursued 
him, ready to strike him dead outside, religiously ab- 
stained from touching him the instant he had crossed 
the threshold. 

So we may have strong consolation, who have fled 
for refuge^ to lay hold upon the hope, that is, Christ, 
set before us. We well remember how Moses preach- 
ed Christ by the serpent of brass. (Numbers xxi. 6-9.) 
The Israelites were stung by a poisonous fiery flying 
eerpent ; the wound was death, and no human antidote 
or skill could heal it. What did Moses do ? He was 
commanded to raise a brass serjDent on a pole ; and 
God said, now, every one that will look upon that 



188 MOSES A PREACHER 

brass serpent shall instantly get bodily health. And it 
came to pass that whoever looked rose to his feet, and 
was instantly wx41. Now, if I applied this arbitrarily, 
you might say, that is forcing Moses to write of Christ. 
But the great Master, who can not err, has said, "As 
Moses lifted uj) the serpent in the wilderness, that w^ho- 
soever looked was healed, so also must the Son of man 
be lifted up, that whosoever" looketh by faith, " be- 
lieveth on him may not perish, but have everlasting 
life." (John iii. 14, 15.) 

Moses beautifully preached the gosjDcl, as I showed 
you in a previous Lecture, in the Passover Lamb, the 
most exquisite figure and symbol, full of personal, 
practical, and precious significance. The family within 
felt their whole safety dependent, not upon the thick- 
ness of the walls, not upon the bolts of the doors, not 
upon the weajDons they could wield, but ujDon this, the 
most unlikely thing upon earth, the blood of a lamb 
shed into a basin, and sprinkled on the lintels and door- 
posts. And the persons that were within, when they 
heard the beat of the angel's wing, and the wild v/ail 
that rose from contiguous homes as the first-born of 
Egypt were struck dead, felt that their safety Avas not 
in the strength of their w^alls, nor in the secrecy of 
their retreat, nor in the thickness of the bolts and bars, 
but only in the blood that was sprinkled on the door- 
p*osts. So that gospel which was preached by Moses I 
preach also : your safety from the destroying curse you 
are under, your absolute and indefeasible safety at the 



OF CHRIST. 189 

great white throne, is not in what you have done, is 
not in what you have paid, is not in what you are, but 
only in the blood upon the lintels of the heart, and 
when God shall see the blood there He will pass by. 
" Christ our tassover is sacrificed for us." 

I might also refer to the high priest, and to other 
types of a similar kind. 

In the words therefore of Dr. Vaughan, late head 
master of Harrow, who has written upon this subject : — 
" On what grounds are we asked thus (practically) to 
discard an integral portion of the Bible ? There may 
be novelty in the voice which speaks to us," that is, the 
Bishop of Natal ; " but there is little novelty in the 
objections adduced, or the main arguments by which 
they are supported. Some of them are as old as Christ- 
ianity itself ; questions asked in every nursery; regis- 
tered (some of them) as difficulties in every thoughtful 
mind. And some things have noAV been worked out 
and exhibited in detail, which before lay, so far as Eng- 
lish students were concerned, undeveloped and in the 
grave. Of this kind are those numerical difficulties in 
the history of the Exodus, or the arrangements of the 
sacrificial worship, which have now been drawn out be- 
fore us almost with an air of triumph, contrasting some- 
what strangely Avith the anxieties of the stake at issue, 
and the expressions of personal sorrow with which the 
discussion is introduced. A series of apparent discrep- 
ancies in the arithmetical computations of the Penta- 
teuch, resting for the most part on the basis of a single 



190 MOSES A PREACHER 

fundamental number, and caj^able to that extent at 
least of reconciliation, on the supposition of a single 
clerical error in a department peculiarly liable to mis- 
take, discrepancies, of which none are decisive, no, not 
if they were multiplied tenfold, except on the theory 
of inspiration, which I will venture to say is no part of 
the doctrine of the Catholic Church, put together by a 
skilled hand, and reiterated with a wearisome and al- 
most puerile pertinacity, form the chief argument from 
that conclusion which is placed in the forefront of the 
inquiry, that the Books of Moses and of Joshua are un- 
historical in their character; if the term fictitious is 
withheld, it is only to avoid the appearance of charging 
them with a fraudulent design." 

But we have seen sufficient proof that there is a Gos- 
pel according to Genesis ; we have no less clearly seen 
thus far that Moses ^'rote of Christ; we have also 
proved that Moses preached the Gospel; we have, 
therefore, justly concluded that the objector of ISTatal, 
however subtle, is altogether wrong ; and Moses, God's 
ancient servant, comes out from the ordeal, the severest 
that can possibly be, a minister of Christ, a teacher of 
truth, an inspired writer in the Old Testament Scrip- 
ture. The whole Bible is of God, or none of it is di- 
vine. It is so fixed together that like an arch, drop 
one stone, not merely the keystone, and all must come 
down. Blessed be God, that the evidence of its inspira- 
tion is so accessible and so great. Blessed be God, 
that many of us can say, it is not a matter of doubtful 



OF CHRIST. 191 

"belief, but of absolute assurance, that Christ is the only 
Saviour — only and all-sufficient. Blessed be God, that 
even this minister of religion, consecrated and ordained 
to teach a very different theology, with all his subtilty, 
and tact, and reasoning, and learning, can not and will 
not, nor ten thousand abler and more learned than he, 
shake our belief in this book as having God for its au- 
thor from Genesis to Revelation, truth for its matter, 
and revealing a happy meeting with all we love, and 
that have left and gone before us, when this weary 
world shall be ended, and a brighter and a better shall 
rise out of it. 

Thus the writings of Moses form an integral part of 
the sacred canon, and of those records of which the in- 
spired apostle has said, " From a child thou hast known 
the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise 
unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is 
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for 
instruction in righteousness : that the man of God may 
be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 

The ancient Jew, who learned the way of life, learn- 
ed it from " Moses and the prophets." Moses was a 
Christian man, and a Christian minister, and that too 
of no common type. His creed, and convictions, and 
character, and whole life, are inextinguishable evidences 
of this. His decision, in circumstances of severe trial, 
is a lasting proof that his religion was not in word only, 
but in power. He has an illustrious place among tlie 



192 MOSES A PEEACHER OF CHRIST. 

worthies enrolled by St. Paul : " By faith Moses, when 
he was come to years, refused to be called the son of 
Pharaoh's daughter ; choosing rather to suffer affliction 
with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of 
sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ 
greater riches than the treasures of Egypt : for he had 
respect unto the recompense of the reward." (Hebrews 
xi. 24—26.) 

Moses not only wrote of Christ, but to Him " to live 
was Christ, and to die was great gain." How he 
could have thus believed, and lived, and died, and yet 
have palmed fables on mankind for facts, it must puzzle 
even the Bishop of Natal to explain. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE PENTATEUCH PART OF THE RULE OF FAITH. 

We have a most instructive historic statement of 
what the inmates of heaven think of Moses. It is not 
what the Bishop thinks. " Then he said, I pray thee 
therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my 
father's house : for I have five brethren ; that he may 
testify unto them, lest they also come into this place 
of torment. Abraham saith unto him. They have Moses 
and the prophets ; let them hear them. And he said, 
N"ay, father Abraham : but if one went unto them from 
the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him. If 
they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they 
be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." — Luke 
xvi. 27 — 31. 

It has been alleged by the misguided prelate, to 
Avhom I have made so frequent, though I hope not 
offensively personal reference, that it is doubtful if 
Moses existed at all ; that in all probability he w^as a 
myth of the past ; that if he did exist, he Avas not the 
author of the Pentateuch — and to use the defence 
wliich we often find pleaded in courts of justice, if he 
was the author of tlie Pentateuch, that he collected such 
fables and traditions — the waifs and strays as it were 
of history — as he found floating on the currents of (lie 



194: THE PENTATEUCH PAKT OF 

world, and that he wove them together, or pieced 
them, and made them into what is now assumed to be 
a continuous and inspired history by those foolish and 
unenlightened people called evangelical Christians and 
modern Protestants. This is substantially the belief of 
this prelate. How, I ask, is it possible to reconcile it 
with the words of the parable I have read ? Who is 
the speaker ? Not a fallible man, speaking amidst the 
shadows, and the clouds, and the prejudices of this 
world ; but the ancient patriarch speaking from the 
heights of heaven, where they no longer see through a 
glass darkly, where there are no prejudices to dim the 
eye, no passions to warp the heart ; where they see as 
they are seen, and know even as they are known. That 
patriarch, from the heights of heaven, in the hearing of 
the universe — for the Bible is as a whispering gallery 
in which the echoes of his voice are perpetuated — pro- 
nounces Moses an historic person, and the words of 
Moses to constitute a part of the rule of faith, and law 
of a believer's life. 

If the Bishop of Natal will not hear Ezekiel, and has 
no ear to be charmed by the strains of David's harp, 
nor will regard the dying testimony of St. Stephen, nor 
listen to the powerful and inspired logician, the Apostle 
Paul, let him listen to a voice sounding down the starry 
steeps of heaven, perpetuated along the centuries as 
amid the corridors of a great cathedral, telling him that 
Moses wrote, and that the writings of Moses were suf- 
ficient to make men wise unto salvation. 



THE KULE OF FAITH. 195 

But if this were Abraham's testimony alone, I would 
not ask the Bishop so earnestly to accept it ; it is more, 
far more ; for this story, recorded in this chapter, bears 
the signature of the Son of God. It is not a tale select- 
ed from obsolete traditions ; it is not a story got up by 
an -^sop, or a Phaedrus, or some compiler and collector 
of fables ; it is historic truth, narrated by " The Truth;" 
it is a painting portrayed by Him who made the heav- 
ens and the earth, and lighted up both with all their 
distinctive splendors. Abraham's testimony, to use 
the language of modern law, is countersigned by the 
signature, and invested with the authority of Jesus 
Christ. " They have Moses and the prophets ; let 
them hear them. If they hear not them, neither will 
they be j)ersuaded though (if) one rose from the 
dead." 

Let us try to measure the force of this. I do not 
urge these things merely as a reply to Bishop Colenso ; 
I seize the opportunity of the popularity, the striking 
popularity, of his most sophistical and unworthy objec- 
tions to the Pentateuch, — that is, to the Word of God, 
— in order to enable me to show on what strong founda- 
tions that Word rests ; and to enable those, whoin I 
am bound to teach the way of all truth, to be ready 
every one to give an answer to the skeptic for the laith 
as well as the hope that is in him. Let us now see 
what these Avords imply and tcacli. First of all, the 
language of Abraham implies that IMoses was the 
writer of the books that bore of okl, and bear still his 



196 THE PENTATEUCH PART OF 

name. He says, " They," these five brethren that are 
on earth, " have," what every Jew recognized as in- 
spired, " Moses and the prophets." The rich man an- 
swered, " Nay, father Abraham ; but if one went unto 
them from the dead they will repent. And he said 
unto him, K they hear not ;" what an attestation to the 
fullness, and the clearness, and the sufficiency of Moses ; 
— " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither 
Avill they be persuaded, though (or if) one rose from 
the dead." In what shape could these five brethren 
left on earth have had Moses and the prophets ? Per- 
sonally, Moses and the prophets were in heaven ; how 
then could they have them? In this sense: they had 
the writings which unfolded the mind, expressed the 
sentiments, and contained the history and doctrines 
which Moses was raised up to teach. If, for instance, 
you were to hear me say to a person, you have Homer, 
and Virgil, and Milton, what would you understand ? 
Certainly this : You have the "Iliad" of Homer, the 
"iEneid" of Virgil, and the "Paradise Lost" of Mil- 
ton. In the same manner when Abraham said to the 
rich man, " They have Moses and the prophets," he 
meant, they have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Ifumbers, 
Deuteronomy; the five books called the Pentateuch, 
which Moses wrote, and in which, being dead, he yet 
speaketh to the heart, the conscience, and the intellect 
of mankind. 

It is important to notice, in the second place, the 
very important inference which this recognition of the 



THE RULE OF FAITH. 197 

writings of Moses demands. It implies that these 
writings were able then, and I maintain they are able 
now, not so clearly as the gospels, but with equal cer- 
tainty, to make wise unto salvation. " All scripture is 
given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doc- 
trine, for correction, and for instruction in righteous- 
ness, that the name of God may be perfect, thoroughly 
furnished unto all good works." It is, " all scripture 
is" {deonvevarog) ''breathed into by God." These 
words were written by an apostle ; his reference was 
not to the Gospels, only one of which probably was 
then Avritten ; nor to the Epistles, but to the Old Test- 
ament Scriptures. That it was to the Old Testament 
Scriptures is "plain, from what he tells Timothy in the 
preceding verse : " From a child thou hast known the 
Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto 
salvation." But what Scriptures did Timothy know as 
a child ? Those which his mother and his grandmother, 
Lois and Eunice, taught him ; those of Moses and the 
prophets ; and on these the apostle passes the indefeasi- 
ble and conclusive judgment, they are inspired or 
breathed into by the Spirit of God. 

This rich man, lost and ruined, in misery, without 
hope, and A\dthout heart, and without the prospect or 
the possibility of deliverance, feels deep sorrow for five 
of his brethren, the children of tlie same parents, left 
upon the earth, and living, as lie had lived, in the en- 
joyment of the luxuries of the world, and in utter con- 
tempt or disregard of the truths of God, of the soul, 



198 THE PENTATEUCH PART OF 

of eternity. He says, I am lost because I knew not 
the way to heaven, or rather neglected the great salva- 
tion. But I have an earnest desire that those I have 
left behind me may never come into such a place of 
torture as I find this to be. A sentiment or statement 
that does not seem 'compatible with what the Bishop 
holds, that hell is a mere purgatory ; or with what the 
leading men of the " Essays and Reviews " hold, that 
it is a place of purification, of temporary duration. It 
appears to me altogether otherwise. But on this I do 
not dwell here. He says, My brethren are likely to^ be 
lost, just as I am. I want you, father Abraham, to 
send this poor man, Lazarus, to whom I cared not to 
give the crumbs that fell from my tabl^, whose sores 
the dogs licked ; I now see that he is in glory, he is 
happy ; I am tormented ; do send him, that he may 
speak a word to my five brethren, that they come not 
into this place of torment. He did not say. Send me, 
as if he felt that were hopeless, but send at least Laza- 
rus. TVhat was the answer ? " They have Moses and 
the prophets." An attestation to the fullness, the suf- 
ficiency, and clearness of the Word of God not to be 
explained away. " They have Moses and the pro^Dhets." 
But he said, Xay, father Abraham ; if one were to de- 
scend from the heights of heaven, radiant with its im- 
perishable splendor, or if one were to emerge from 
the depths of hell, clad in its indescribable blackness, 
and were to tell them of the joys of the one, and of 
the miseries and the agonies of the other, they certain- 



THE RULE OF FAITH. 199 

ly could not withstand the appeal — they would inevi- 
tably repent. This v.^as a momentous request, appar- 
ently most natural, feasible, and likely to succeed, if 
granted. But what is the answ^er ? The rich man 
says, " They will repent." The answer of Abraham is, 
" If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will 
they be persuaded," not only will not repent, but they 
will not even be persuaded, '' though one were to rise 
from the dead." But what does this answer teach us ? 
Unquestionably that these writings which the Bishop 
of Natal says are impostures or fables of no authenti- 
city or divine origin, are able to make wise unto salva- 
tion. Certainly the voice from heaven contradicts in 
the most emphatic terms the voice from Natal ; for it 
tells us, that if a man is not saved by reading the way 
to be saved in the Pentateuch, he would not be saved 
if one were to come down from heaven, or to come up 
from hell, and preach to him the terrors of the one, or 
the glories and attractions of the other. What does 
this imply ? That the Pentateuch, " Moses, and the 
prophets," contain as full, if not as clear, revelation of 
the way to heaven as the New Testament. What did 
these five need to learn ? They wanted to be tauglit 
that time has its echoes in eternity, and its issues also ; 
that acts in this world are reproduced in retributions 
in the world that is to come ; that sin in this workl un- 
visited on earth, is visited in the world to come ; that 
a way of escape was needed ; that a Saviour, in whose 
blood atonement would be found, was accessible. Let 



200 THE PENTATEUCH PAKT OF 

one, therefore, rise from the dead and tell them of these 
things. Nay, says Abraham, Moses tells them all these 
things. He has told them of a futm^e ; he has described 
the law of retribution ; he has warned them of death, 
and judgment, and eternity; and if they see not these 
things to be true and solemn realities as they are por- 
trayed in all their just proportions in the pages of the 
Pentateuch, then they will not see them more clearly, 
nor one whit more be persuaded of them if one were 
to rise fi'om the dead and repeat them. N'ow, I ask 
you, as reasonable men, is it possible that there can be 
a higher attestation to the fullness and the sufficiency 
of the Mosaic record than what is contained in the 
language of Abraham ; and the language of Abraham, 
mark you, attested and accepted by the Son of God ? 
But is it true that Moses teaches these truths ? I an- 
swer, Unquestionably so. Some persons have objected 
to Moses on this ground, that he does not teach immor- 
tality, that he does not speak often, if at all, of the im- 
mortality of the soul. Xeither does the Xew Testa- 
ment. In the same manner, and for the same reason, 
neither the Old nor the Xew Testament talk often of 
the existence of a God ; they assume a God as the key- 
note of the harmonies of the universe. Xor do they 
speak often of the immortality of the soul ; they as- 
sume the immortality of the soul as of the very essence 
of human being. In fact, there scarcely ever has been 
a nation or a pagan from the earliest to the latest times 
that has not believed in a God of some sort, and in an 



THE RULE OF FAITH. 201 

after existence, laden with everlasting retributions, of 
good or evil. But it has been urged that the rewards 
in the Mosaic record chieflj relate to time. I admit 
it. But what was the Jewish Church ? A theocracy 
— a government by God Himself. The punishments 
were temporal, and visible ; the rewards were temporal 
also ; but it was equally the evidence and the lesson of 
retribution; and retribution existing in the limited 
scale of time is the foreshadow, and the earnest, and 
the pledge of retribution existing in eternity. What 
is providence ? Retribution ; God rewarding the good, 
God punishing the evil. And if Moses taught the 
great doctrine of retribution, or rewards and punish 
ments, he taught the great truth that men needed to 
know, that it shall be well with the righteous, and that 
sin is the ruin of individuals, as it is the shame of na- 
tions. The Saviour Himself asserts that Moses taught 
these things, when He says, referring to the resurrec- 
tion of the dead, " Have ye not read that which was 
spoken unto you by God ; I am the God of Abraham, 
and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ? God 
is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living." 
Here, then, is the attestation of Abraham, accepted 
and confirmed by the Blessed Saviour, that the Mosaic 
record teaches punishments, the issues of sin ; rewards* 
the fruits of holiness ; an atonement through the blood 
of sprinkling, the way to enjoy the one, and to escape 
the other ; and all the substantial and vital truths that 

are more fully and splendidly declared in llie Now 
0* 



202 THE PENTATEUCH TAUT OF 

Testament were more dimly, but not less divinely, 
enunciated in the Pentateuch, or the books of Moses. 

But after Abraham had told the rich man this, the 
rich man was not satisfied. " ^ay, father Abraham ;" 
as much as to say, that is not enough. I had Moses 
and the prophets, but I am now in hell. And there- 
fore his argument was that Moses and the prophets 
Avere not sufficient. In other words, he regarded the 
writings of Moses and the prophets as altogether un- 
reliable, unhistorical ; in fact, he was Bishop Colenso, 
without the light and responsibility of the Bishop of 
Natal, but he was where restoration, and repentance, 
and recovery were altogether impossible. He wanted 
a better guide than Moses ; whether it was the inner 
light that the Bishop insists on, or the outer light that 
others require ; he was quite satisfied in hell that the 
Pentateuch was not historical, that its truths were not 
reliable. In the words of Bengel, the most eminent, 
and able, and impressive commentator on the New 
Testament, " YilijDendium scrip turae miser, relicto luxu 
secum intulit in inferno." " This contempt of Scrip- 
ture the wretched man, after leaving his luxury be- 
hind, carried with him into hell." Moral character 
survives the grave. The contempt of Moses as insuf- 
ficient, unhistorical, unreliable, we find in Natal ; what 
a strange coincidence! we find it in hell also. In 
heaven, admiration of Moses and the prophets ; in hell, 
contempt of Moses and the prophets; in Scripture, 
and in the words of our Saviour, admiration and ap- 



THE EULE OF FAITH. 203 

preciation. The language of the lost man was, I want 
a brighter light than Moses can supply, kindled, if 
you like, in hell, and sent from beneath to warn my 
brethren not to corne to this place of torment. The 
answer of Abraham is. They have a bright light, kin- 
dled in heaven, sent down from glory ; and if they ure 
not guided and enlightened by it they would not be en- 
lightened nor instructed if one were to rise from the 
dead. The words are extremely emphatic. He says. 
But they would repent if one were to rise from the 
dead. The language of Abraham is, They would not 
even be persuaded. If they have obstinacy sufficient 
to shut their eyes upon the light that streams from the 
Pentateuch and the prophets, they won't open their 
eyes to receive and be convinced by the light that 
will stream from Him who will rise from the dead. 

Can we have a more impressive or emphatic testi- 
monial to Moses, than the voice of Abraham in heaven 
confirmed by the voice of the Son of God ? Moses 
was the morning star that intimated the approach of 
the rising Sun of Righteousness. The Pentateuch was 
the soft, the beautiful, but true dawn that intimated 
and prophesied the approaching everlasting and glori- 
ous noon. 

How conclusive an answer to those that say, Show 
us a sign. How many Christians, professing Christ- 
ians, do we meet with, who say. Well, the Bible is all 
very good, and all very true ; there is much in it that 
we like, much in it that we admire ; but the truth is, 



204 THE PENTATEUCH PART OF 

we want Goel Almighty to show us some miraculous 
sign from heaven to strengthen our belief. Suppose 
God were to grant what you ask; suppose a spirit 
were to descend from heaven, wrapt in its intense and 
beautiful glory ; or suppose a spirit were to come up 
from the vasty-deep, clothed in the awful and intoler- 
able shadow of death, suppose the one were to speak 
of the splendor of his inheritance, and the other of 
the torments no water can cool ; what would be the 
efiect ? I know what hundreds say. Then we should 
no longer doubt Christianity, nor disbelieve the Bible, 
nor live a life of sin, of profligacy, and of unbelief 
You are utterly mistaken ; for after you had seen the 
vision you would consult yom- physician about your 
nerves ; you would say, I have been greatly annoyed, 
my system must be unstrung and shattered. I have 
seen a very awful vision, and I know not what to make 
of it. How do you account for it ? The doctor would 
instantly suggest. You have eaten something that has 
disagreed with you, and your nerves have in conse- 
quence become disturbed ; your vision is cerebral and 
subjective, a mere delusio visits ; it was nothing else. 
But it seemed so real that you would not be satis- 
fied with such a solution. Xext day you would read 
a great deal on the history of \isions and specters, and 
perhaps you would say. Ah ! it must have been a de- 
lusion. And the third day you would come to the con- 
clusion that it was a dream, and nothing more ; you 
would not believe it to be historical and real. So clear, 



THE RULE OF FAITH. 205 

SO cogent, so full of all that man's mind needs, and that 
man's heart yearns for, is this blessed book, that no 
supernatural apparition, no voice from heaven or from 
hell, no revelation by pretended emissaries of a higher 
power, would have the least effect in convincing that 
man whom the Bible has failed to convince. For what 
is the constitution of man ? He is not a creature to 
be terrified out of hell ; or to be cajoled and charmed 
into heaven ; he is a creature to be convinced in his in- 
tellect, to be enchained by his heart, to be persuaded 
through the truth brought home to his conscience, and 
heart, and intellect, just as we have it in the Word of 
God. 

The whole drift of the prelate, to whom I have so 
frequently referred, is to make the Zulu believe that 
he is more enlightened than Moses, and the African 
tribes than the tribes of Israel, and to dissuade them 
from believing what Moses and the prophets teach, and 
to wait for what they never will find till the judgment 
overtakes the world — an emissary from the heavens 
above, or an emigrant from hell below, to persuade 
them to repent and accept the truth. 

Abraham teaches here, and his words imply, and the 
Saviour authenticates them, that the Bible in the days 
of the apostles was in the hands of the laity. Who 
were the five brethren ? Five men of the world, men 
of business ; and " they have," he says, " Moses and 
the prophets." Well then, it does seem to me that if 
Moses and the prophets were fit to be put into the 



206 THE PENTATEUCH PART OF 

hands of the laity then, they can not be unsuitable to 
be read by the laity now. In other words, it is evi- 
dence that Protestantism is not the creation of the 
sixteenth century, but is as old as the religion of 
Moses, as the days of the apostles, and of our blessed 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

We are driven irresistibly to the conclusion that 
"the Bishop has not read his Bible, or if he has, that 
he has read it through spectacles which have been 
extremely tinged and colored, or sadly perverting as 
a medium through which to understand it ; and that 
the words of Moses are not the words of man, but 
the words of God ; and that the statements of the 
Bishop of Katal are the unhappy crotchets of a de- 
luded and an iminstructed mind. 

I exceedingly rejoice to hear that the Jews, as a 
body, have been so startled by this attack made upon 
their Scriptures that thousands of them, I am credi- 
bly informed, are reading the Pentateuch who have 
had no time (for there are formal Jews just as there 
are formal Christians) to read it before. And it is 
a most grati^ing thing that the most effective rej^ly 
on certain points to the objections of the Bishop of 
Xatal has been made by the Chief Rabbi of London^. 
What a startling fact ! how should it shake the con- 
fidence of the Bishop of Xatal in his conclusion, 
that a Jewish rabbi has to defend the Word of God 
against a Christian Bishop ! And yet, alas ! if Dr. 
Colenso were alone, one would not mind it ; but lie 



THE EULE OF FAITH. 207 

is only one of the pickets of an advancing army ; tlie 
more advanced of a host that take up the same sen- 
timents. One of the writers of the "Essays and 
Reviews," Mr. Williams, who, instead of being 
turned out of his benefice, and sent to join a com- 
munion where such things may be preached with 
impunity, by the judgment pronounced upon him is 
to be one year suspended from his benefice, and lose 
the fruits of it — as if he cared one halfpenny for a 
judgment of that sort — instead of being expelled 
from a Church, which, in its Articles and its Liturgy, 
is most Scriptural ; he is merely suspended for a year, 
and fined the product of his benefice, which can not 
be above a couple of hundred pounds, for that time. 
These essayists are, and have been, the teachers of 
the leading dogmas which, under the incubation of 
the Bishop of Natal, have developed themselves into 
the portentous heresies contained in this book. 

But now, having said so much of these, let me 
proceed one step further, and show you that if the 
writers of the " Essays and Reviews " and the Bishop 
of Natal have so sorrowful and depreciatory an esti- 
mate and appreciation of the Word of God, the most 
illustrious of former days have formed a very diifer- 
ent conclusion. I have been collecting for a good 
time the testimonies of the great and good to the 
integrity, the purity, and tlie excellence of the Word 
of God ; and some of these I here present. One re- 
markable testimony is wrung from a skeptic, a sen- 



208 THE PENTATEUCH PAET OF 

siial skeptic, Rousseau. He says, " This divine book 
needs only to be read with reflection to inspire love 
for its author, and most of all an ardent desire to 
obey its precepts. No one can rise from its perusal 
without feeling himself better than he was before. 
It is impossible that a book so simple and so sublime 
can merely be the work of man." And yet he lived 
a sensualist, he died a skeptic — a striking testimony 
to what a nobleman once said : " The only objection 
that is fatal to the Bible, that I know, is a bad heart." 
Let me quote, again, the testimony of a most illus- 
trious personage, skilled in law, in logic, in literature, 
Sir Matthew Hale. He says, " I have been acquainted 
with men and books ; I have had long experience in 
learning, and in the world. There is no book like 
the Bible for excellent learning, wisdom, and purity ; 
and it is want of understanding in them who think or 
speak otherwise." A most accomplished person, Avho 
wrote much, and whose judgment was much relied 
on, the Hon. Robert Boyle, thus expressed himself: 
" The Bible, that matchless book. It is impossible 
we can study it too much, or esteem it too highly." 
John Locke, the founder of the deepest metaphysical 
philoso)jhy, the man who did for the human mind 
what Sir Isaac Newton did for the stars and the 
universe, says, " Study the Holy Scriptures, especially 
the New Testament. Therein are contained the words 
of eternal life. This book has God for its author, 
salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture 



THE EULE OF FAITH. 209 

of error for its matter." Then John Milton, the no- 
blest poet, who sung ihe days of Paradise in its glory, 
and Paradise in its ruins, and Paradise Regained, says, 
" There are no songs comparable to the songs of 
Zion ; no orations equal to those of the j)rophets, no 
politics like those which the Scriptures teach." Dr. 
Samuel Johnson, one of the great classic authorities 
and writers of our language, on his death-bed, ad- 
dressed a young man in these memorable words : 
" Young man, attend to the advice of one who has 
possessed some degree of fame in the world, and who 
will shortly appear before his Maker ; read the Bible 
every day of your life." Again, Sir William Jones, 
the greatest linguist of his day, and whose name is 
celebrated for all that is profound, and illustrious, and 
good, wrote on the last leaf of his Bible, "I have 
regularly and attentively read the Holy Scriptures, 
and am of opinion that this volume, independently 
of its Divine origin, contains more sublimity and 
beauty, more pure morality, more important history 
of men, in strains of poetry and eloquence, than can 
be collected from all other books, of whatever age 
or in whatever language they be composed." And 
Lord Bacon, the founder of modern philosopliy, the 
author of inductive science, thus writes upon it : 
*' Thy works, O Lord, have been my book, but thy 
Scripture much more. I have sought thee in the 
country, I liave sought thee in courts, in fields, and 
in the garden ; but I liave found thee in thy sane- 



210 THE PENTATEUCH PART OF 

tiiaiy, and in thy word." Sir Isaac Xewton, who 
cast his line over the stars, who weiglied them in 
scales, who estimated their density, calculated their 
distances, and was the profoundest and most illus- 
trious scholar of ancient or of modern times, that 
great and gifted man says, "We account the Scrip- 
tures the most sublime philosophy." Bishop Colenso 
says that a little knowledge of geology makes him 
deny the Scriptures. Sir Isaac Newton says, "The 
Scriptures contain the most profound philosophy." 
The great Selden said, " There is no book on which 
we can rely in a dying hour, except the Bible." Dr. 
Mason Good, eminent and illustrious in his day, said, 
" Such a book is now in our hands ; let us j^rize it, 
for it must be the word of God, as it bears the direct 
stamp and testimony of his works." Fisher Ames, 
the eminent American orator, says, " Should not the 
Bible regain the place it once held in the school- 
room ? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating 
and noble." Professor Dana-, a living and eminent 
American geologist, says, "The two records, the^ 
creation, the revelation, the earlier and the later, are 
one in their sublime enunciation of the history of 
creation ; there is equal grandeur in the progress of 
the ages. They both contain conceptions infinitely 
beyond the reach of the human intellect, and bear 
equal evidence of their Divine origin." "Wilberforce, 
the father of the present Bishop of Oxford, and the 
eminent advocate of the emancipation of the slave, 



THE RULE OF FAITH. 211 

gave this as his last testimony, "Read the Bible, 
read the Bible. Let no religious book take its place. 
Through all my perplexities and distresses I never 
read any other book. I never knew the want of any 
other. It has been my hourly study. Books about 
religion may be useful enough, but they will not do 
instead of the simple truth of the Bible." And Mr. 
Cecil, a predecessor of the Rev. Mr. Noel, in St. 
John's Chapel, in London, says : " This book resem- 
bles an extensive garden, where there is a vast vari- 
ety of fruits and flowers, some more essential, some 
more splendid than others ; but not a blade is suf- 
fered to grow that has not its use and beauty in the 
system." And, lastly, that marvelous man, Avhose 
life by Canon Stanley is the most interesting biogra- 
phy that was ever written, and worthy of being read 
a second and a third time. Dr. Arnold of Rugby, left 
this as his testimony : " A man's love of Scripture at 
the beginning of his religious life, is such as makes 
the praise of it which other Christians give to the 
Bible seem exaggerated ; but after twenty or tliirty 
years of religious life and experience, such praise 
always sounds inadequate; its glories seem so much 
more full then than they seemed at first." 

Well now, put against these splendid testimonies 
the protest of the Bishop of Natal. Men competent 
for genius, experience, and knowledge of science have 
pronounced the Scriptures to be Avorthy of Avhat is 
imputed to them, tliat God inspired them, and that 
holy men inspired by Ilim wrote them. 



212 THE PENTATEUCH PART OF 

How just is the Divine account of Scripture : " The 
words of the Lord are pure words ; as silver tried in 
a furnace of earth, purified seven times." The Bishop 
says there is an alloy in them ; that instead of being 
seventeen or twenty carats fine, they are not above 
three or four carats fine ; that the alloy preponderates, 
that the dross exceeds the silver, and some parts are 
only electro-plated, a thin coatmg of silver that dis- 
guises the large amount of worthless brass that is 
beneath. But God says very difierently; they are 
words tried as silver ; the dross consumed, the alloy 
eliminated, and the evidence irresistible to every 
one that candidly inquii'es, " Thy word, O God, is 
truth." 

It is a heavy charge to make against a Christian 
Bishop, that he has attempted in his printed works 
to imdermine the authority and limit the claims of 
the Word of God. The Bible is the depository of 
the hopes of millions — their rule of life and faith — 
and whatever touches it touches the ark of God. 
But this heavy charge has been proved in these 
Lectures to the satisfaction of every thoughtful mind 
that has heard or read them. Were I alone in mak- 
ing this grave assertion it would still rest on its only 
right foundation — the extracts and evidence adduced 
— evidence accessible and intelligible to the humblest 
reader. But with a unanimity almost unprecedented, 
the chief ministers of the Church of England have 
pronounced judgment in terms even stronger and 
more decided than those employed in these Lectures. 



THE RULE OF FAITH. 213 

Among these one whose sound judgment, consistent 
l^iety, and thorough acquaintance with the merits of 
this subject it is impossible to doubt, gave forth a 
well-considered estimate of their character and de- 
structive tendencies at a meeting of the Scripture 
Readers' Society, recently held at Leeds. The Bishop 
of Ripon, who occupied the chair, spoke as follows : — 

*'He said it was particularly painful to find a man in high 
office in the Church miserably perverting his talents, so as to 
employ them, not for the advancement of Divine truth, but rather 
in disparagement of the claims of the inspired Word of God. For 
his own part, painful as that spectacle was, he (the Bishop of 
Ripon) did not anticipate that any very great evil would result 
from the attempt to which he had referred. The objections which 
had been brought forward against the historical accuracy of the 
Pentateuch were very old and threadbare : there was nothing new 
in them. Nor was it difficult to perceive how easily these objec- 
tions might be disposed of by those who had their minds firmly 
rooted in the persuasion that the Bible was the inspired Word of 
God. Let it be borne in mind what the conclusion really was, 
supposing they took Dr. Colenso's views to be accurate. If this 
view is a just one, then we may suppose the Pentateuch to be 
the production of a very clever impostor. If an impostor, the 
writer of the Pentateuch must have been an exceedingly clever 
one. But was it to be supposed for one moment that, being 
such a clever impostor, he would have allowed such palpable ab- 
surdities as — if they believed the Bishop to be right — existed 
in the book? The very openness of the Pentateuch, the matters 
which lie on the surface of the book, and which Dr. Colcnso would 
have us take as a sufficient ground for doubt — were in themselves 
a sufficient answer to the objections which had been raised on the 



214 THE PENTATEUCH, ETC. 

point of historical accuracy. They must also bear this in mind, 
that every part of the Bible is so interwoven with the other parts, 
that to invalidate any one portion was to throw discredit upon 
the rest, so that if you undermined the authority of the Pentateuch, 
you would also invalidate the authority of the Prophets, of the 
historical portions of the Bible, and of the New Testament. Each 
part so intertwines with the rest that to throw discredit upon one 
portion was to throw discredit upon the whole. If they could 
successfully disprove the historical accuracy of the Pentateuch, 
they would scarcely have any thing left in the Bible on which 
the mind could lay hold for peace and comfort, as truth to be 
rehed upon, as truth saving in its nature." 



CHAPTER X. 

THE STONES OF EGYPT WITNESSES TO MOSES. 

Theee is another line of witnesses to Moses. This 
is traced on the monumental stones and hieroglyphic 
writings of Egypt. I may therefore say, " If Moses 
should hold his peace, the stones would immediately 
cry out." 

This subject is one of great and peculiar interest. 
Tlie scope and object of all that I shall now adduce 
will be to show that if the Mosaic record can not be 
accepted as historical by clear spiritual proofs, such as 
I have adduced on previous occasions, and as a genuine 
and authentic document, we can demonstrate from the 
monuments of ancient Egypt, and from the remains of 
its tombs, and with clear and irresistible force, that if 
all the evangelists, and apostles, and prophets were to 
hold their tongues, the stones of Egypt still open their 
mouths and speak out. To those that ask for this evi- 
dence I will explain its origin in few, and, I hope, plain 
and intelligible words. 

We find in ancient times, and at periods demonstra- 
bly contemporaneous with those in Avhich the events 
recorded in Genesis and in Exodus took place, that it 
was tlie habit of the ancient Egyptians to trace upon 
stones, and monuments, and tombs, inscriptions or re- 



216 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

cords of events that had taken place, and of the char- 
acters, biographies, exploits, and histories of illustrious 
men. It was a universal practice for the Egyptians to 
inscribe upon the monuments and tombs of those that 
slept in them the records of events they were histori- 
cally associated with. We find inscriptions traced on 
the stones showing what were the living dynasties, 
who the living kings, and what events transpired in 
their reigns. 

I have here a work written by Hengstenberg, one of 
the most learned and eminent of continental writers, 
who has collected, in brief space, the most remarkable 
inscriptions on the tombs and obelisks ; also the work 
of Osburn, a very able writer, who has likewise given 
sketches and drawings of these monuments and stones, 
containing records of events associated with the Israel- 
ites ; also a most excellent resume of the magnificent 
work of Lepsius by Rev. B. Saville. I proceed to give 
you some facts discovered by these and other learned 
men, which will show more forcibly than any argument 
of mine could do, that Moses, the inspired penman, is 
invariably right, and that Dr. Colenso is not only 
wrong, but has made the most rash and unwarrantable 
assertions. 

First of all, ancient historians give the name of 
Menes, or Mizraim, the Scripture name, as that of the 
first man who reigned in Egypt. The Scripture date is 
100 years after the Flood, at which time the dispersion 
occurred, upward of 2,000 years before the birth of 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 217 

Christ. This very name is found at the top of the list 
of ancestors of Rameses Sesostris, in a relief of a royal 
palace near Gournoii, in Western Thebes. It is also 
found in the Turin papyrus brought from Thebes. 
Champollion says : — 

I have demonstrated that no Egj^ptian monument is older than the 
year 2,200 before the Christian era. This certainly is high antiquity, 
but it presents nothing contradictory to the sacred histories. I ven- 
ture to affirm it establishes them on all points ; for it is a fact, by 
adopting the chronology and succession of kings given by the Egypt- 
ian monuments that the Egyptian history wonderfully accords with 
the sacred writings. 

Let me notice another striking coincidence — and 
these things speak for themselves, they require no com- 
ment. Moses relates that Abraham went down into 
Egypt, and that the reigning Pharaoh gave him 
*' sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and 
maidservants, and she asses, and camels." Josephus 
says : — 

Abraham taught the Egyptians the science of astronomy. 

Osburn, in his Monumental History of Egypt says : — 

It is a well-established synchronism of much value that Abraham 
went into Egypt in the reign of Pharaoh Acthoes. 

There is no evidence of any Egyptian king before 
him. Bat on the monuments there is evidence that 
the son and successor of this Pharaoh had learned as- 
tronomy, such as it was then known. 

Again, we can demonstrate from the monuments this 
10 



218 THE STOXES OF EGYPT 

fact, that a certain Pharaoh, of a certain dynasty, reign- 
ed in Egypt when Joseph was carried into Egypt as a 
shwe. His name was Apophis, or Pheops. VTe can 
demonstrate with a force that would satisfy even Bishop 
Colenso that, under the reign of that Pharaoh, a per- 
son, named Joseph — his name Eitsuph, inscribed upon 
the stones still remaining in the land of Egypt — was 
selected by Pharaoh to be the distributor of grain — 
the saviour of his country. The sojourning of the 
children of Israel in Egypt was 430 years from the 
call of Abraham, and 215 years from the descent of 
Jacob into Egy|3t to the Exode. TTell, a tomb was 
discovered in recent researches in Egypt, and on this 
tomb is written, translated from the hieroglyphic 
into English, the name Eitsuph, that is, Joseph. On 
deciphering the inscriptions on this tomb we find him 
spoken of as one who had been introduced into the 
land; who had been raised to be what he is called in 
Scripture, the saviour of his country ; who liad been 
elevated by the reigning Pharaoh to be the distributor 
and guardian of the granaries of the land. Compare 
the coincidence, which is so remarkable, between the 
Scripture records of Joseph and the inscriptions on the 
monuments, and the dynasty that was reigning when 
Joseph was appointed ; and if Dr. Colenso will not be- 
lieve the history that is recorded in Moses, he must be 
driven to accept the history recorded on the stones. 
So that if Moses were silent, the stones would open 
their elocjuent lips, and declare that the record of the 



WITIn'ESSES to MOSES 219 

Pentateuch is true. We learn, as already stated, from 
the inscrij)tions on the Egyptian monuments, that the 
Pharaoh reigning in Egypt when Joseph was carried 
there as a slave, was Apophis or Pheops. He was the 
patron of Joseph. When Joseph was invested with 
power, it is said, " Pharaoh called his name Zaphnath- 
paaneah, and he gave him to wife Asenath, the daugh- 
ter of Potipherah, priest of On." The name given to 
Joseph is rendered in the margin of our Bible, " a re- 
vealer of secrets." Rosellini interprets it, '' Saviour of 
the age." Gesenius, " Sustainer of the age." Osburn, 
" One with Neith, the goddess of wisdom." This last 
is justified by Pharaoh's address to Joseph ; " None so 
discreet and wise as thou." His wife's name, " She 
who sees Neith," goddess of wisdom. Mr. Saville, in 
his able work, states : — 

At BeuU Hasan, on the Nile, about 100 miles north of Thebes, 
there has been discovered the tomb of Xevotp, an oflBicer of high 
rank under Sesertesen II. On this tomb there is a representation of 
an occurrence in the sixth year of that monarch, in which two Egyp- 
tians are presenting to their master a party of strangers, consisting 
of ten males, four females, with two children on a donkey, and a lad 
bearing a spear. The inscription calls them, *' The great foreign 
prisoners." No one who has seen the magnificent work of Lepsius, 
in which the paintings on Egyptian monuments are copied with ex- 
treme fidelity, can for a moment doubt that these strangers bear in 
their features the strongly marked characteristics of the Jewish race. 
When, moreover, we find that Sesertesen II. was ruUng at Thebes 
when Pharaoh Apophis was at the commencement of his loug reign, 
we think this remarkable painting must refer to the arrival of the 



220 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

family of Jacob in Egypt. Though called prisoners, they are not 
represented in the guise of prisoners, but armed and at liberty, which 
would seem to intimate they were an honorary deputation from Lower 
Egypt to an officer of the rival dynasty in the Upper country, during 
an interval in the civil war. 

Again, in Genesis xlvii. 20, we read — 

And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh ; for the 
Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over 
them; so the land became Pharaoh's, Only the land of the priests 
bought he not. 

This refers to the seven years' famine, and the peo- 
ple selling their land for food. Osburn says — 

The monumental proofs of the occurrence of this modification in 
the social condition of Egypt are just as striking as any of those 
which have engaged us. The tombs of the eras that follow that of 
Apophis bear unequivocal testimony to a great political change hav- 
ing taken place in the condition of the inhabitants of Egypt at this 
period. In old Egypt scarcely an act of any Pharaoh is recorded on 
the tombs of his subjects. Nor does his name appear save in the 
names of their estates. But in the tombs of the new kingdom, or 
that of the times that followed Joseph, all this is reversed. There is 
scarcely a tomb of any importance, the principal subject of which is 
not some act of service or devotion by the excavator to the reigning 
family. The cause of this change we plainly discover in the legisla- 
tion of Joseph. 

This writer then proceeds to show that the priest- 
hood, after the days of Joseph, was raised to new dig- 
nity and power, arising from the forbearance of the 
king to exact payment for corn supplied to the temple. 
On the Rosetta Stone there is this inscription ; 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 221 

" Ptolemy Epiphanes ordered that the revenues of the 
temple and the annual contributions to them in corn 
and money should remain every where as usual." Here 
are effects indicating an origin which is found in the 
history of Joseph in Egypt, as written in the Scriptures. 
But, you say, how can the tomb of Joseph be in 
Egypt, when we know from Scripture that his bones, 
according to his own directions, were carried into the 
land of Canaan? The answer is, Joseph died 144 
years before the Exode from Egypt into Canaan. We 
read in Genesis, "And Joseph said unto his brethren, 
I die ; and God wdll surely visit you, and bring you 
out of this land unto the land which He sware to 
Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took 
an* oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will 
surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from 
hence. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten 
years old ; and they embalmed him, and he was put in 
a coffin in Egypt." Now, it was the practice of the 
Egyptians to build their monuments before they died ; 
and for this great man, described on the monuments as 
the saviour of his country, as the head of the granaries, 
a tomb of unrivaled magnificence and beauty, was 
built; and there his dead dust lay for 144 years, till 
the night when the firstborn of Egypt were slain, and 
it was carried by the faithful Israelites into tlie land 
which God had promised, and where Joseph expressed 
his desire that it should be carried at that time. And 
thus we demonstrate the truth of the history of Joseph ; 



222 THE STOXES OF EGYPT 

for the leading links of his biography are traceable 
there, and distinctly so. I here quote another extract 
from Mr. Saville's work, to jDrove what I have stated. 
He says : 

There are still in existence at Sakkara, opposite Memphis, in Lower 
Egypt, the riiius of the tomb of a distinguished personage, whose 
name in hieroglyphics accords with that of Joseph. It is close in 
the vicinity of the largest pyramid, of the group which Osburn con- 
siders to have been the tomb of Apophis. On the relief of the 
tomb referred to, the names and titles of Joseph appear in great 
beauty. The name is written in hieroglyphics, Ei tsuph — " he came 
to save." The title under which Joseph's power was inaugurated, as 
we read in the Book of Genesis, by the people crying Abrech, "Bow 
the knee," appears likewise on the tomb. He is also called Director 
of the Granaries of the Chiefs of both Egypts. 

If the Bishop of N'atal refuses the history of Moses, 
let him hear a voice rising from the tombs of Egypt 
attesting Moses right and the Bishop of IsTatal Avrong. 

We turn to another incident of the very same kind, 
and a no less remarkable one. We find the name of 
the Pharaoh that reigned in Egypt at the time that the 
Exode or Exodus was about to take place. That Pha- 
raoh's name is contained on the monuments, and can 
be identified also from Scripture. We find inscribed 
upon the monuments the record that this last Pharaoh 
had a most troublesome, disturbed, and revolutionary 
reign ; that his later history Avas a scene of jDcrjDlexity 
and trouble. His name vf as Tuthmosis IV. Osburn 
says that at this period there are signs of troublous 
times in Egypt, and " indications that Tuthmosis TV, 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 228 

had a turbulent reign." And we should naturally ex- 
pect that the Pharaoh at the time of the exode would 
have a troubled reign. We find one account of his 
reign, contained on one of the monuments, the Great 
Sphinx at Ghizeh, describes first his character, next his 
exploits, next the long line of his predecessors, and it 
adds, " And then ;" and there it stops. We know noth- 
ing more of him. We find he was the reigning Pha- 
raoh when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt into 
the desert ; w^e find on the monuments evidence irre- 
sistible that he was so ; we find the descri|)tion that 
identifies him with the Pharaoh of the Exode ; but 
that after all that is good and great has been spoken of 
him, it suddenly breaks ofi* with, " And then ;" after 
which all is blank. But this strange and silent blank 
is more than striking eloquence. We find that Pha- 
raoh's tomb is not to be discovered in Egypt; the 
tombs of the previous Pharaohs are all found and iden- 
tified ; but his is wanting. What is the obvious infer- 
ence ? That he was the Pharaoh that pursued the Is- 
raelites w^ith his brilliant horsemen into the desert, and 
that he perished in the Red Sea, over which Miriam 
and Moses stood, and praised Him who had triumphed 
gloriously. 

Let me notice another comcidence. No lang:uaire 
can over-estimate the value of these facts in connec- 
tion with Dr. Colenso's objections. For a long time 
Egypt was an absolute mystery, impenetrable to ar- 
chsGologists and travelers. But, as the world would 



224 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

call it, accidentally — as we know, in the providence 
of God — a stone was found in Eg}73t called the Ro- 
setta Stone, to which I have already alluded. On 
one portion of this stone were the usual hieroglyphic 
characters, giving certain records and accounts ; on a 
second portion of it was the demotic character, or 
the character used in the language of the people, 
translating this ; and on a third portion of it was a 
translation of it into the Greek language. The in- 
stant that Champ ollion and Young discovered this 
last fact, they found the key to the interj^retation 
of all the records on the monuments of Egypt, and 
by that key they are able now to read those myste- 
rious hieroglyphs almost as easily as a scholar can 
read a chapter in Hebrew or in Greek, and to affix 
and perpetuate their translated meaning. We find 
another fact most remarkably confirmatory of what I 
have been asserting, — the historic truth of the Exode 
and the Mosaic record. It is this. We ascertain the 
king who reigned at the time of the Exode ; his name 
is given, his character perfectly identified. TVe find 
on the monuments the hieroglyphic picture of the 
queen, this Pharaoh's wife, having recently given 
birth to a child, that child a son. Two handmaids 
are represented chafing her hands, as if she were in 
sorrow, or in fear, or in peril; and another hand- 
maiden is represented, holding the son up before her, 
as if saying, "Rejoice that a man child and an heir 
to the throne is born." The chronologry of the mon- 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 225 

uments and the chronology of Scripture being here 
perfectly parallel, we discover that the successor to 
that Pharaoh whose son was then born turns out not 
to be his eldest, but his second son ; and the record 
simply states that he had an elder son, of whose life 
and death nothing is said, and that he was succeeded 
by a younger son ; and this birth occurred about that 
very night when the angel of death w^ent forth and 
killed every one of the firstborn, from the son of Pha- 
raoh on the throne down to the son of the meanest 
of his subjects. Now, what is the highly probable 
inference from this ? That if the Scriptures hold 
their tongue, the stones, and rocks, and monuments 
of Egypt cry out ; and that, therefore, if Dr. Colenso 
believes that Moses is not to be trusted as an honest, 
impartial, and reliable historian, he has only to take 
the work of Osburn, or Ilengstenberg, or Wilkinson, 
or Taylor, or Rev. B. Saville, or (and having gone to 
Natal, he surely can accomplish the voyage to Egypt), 
to visit Egypt, and there, if he will shut the mouth of 
Moses, he will hear the stones crying out, " Thy word, 
O God, is truth." 

I might multiply these evidences still more, and in 
doing so, I should only continue to confirm and fur- 
ther to illustrate what I have already stated, that the 
whole monumental history of Egypt runs parallel 
with the whole Mosaic record in the Pentateuch ; and 
that, therefore, the statement of Dr. Colenso, Avhich 
he has reiterated, with awful exaggerations, in his 
10* 



226 THE STOXES OF EGYPT 

second Yolume, recently published, that Moses is not 
a true historian, is confuted, and completely destroy- 
ed, by finding a history parallel and cotemporaneous 
with it, by writers who used the chisel, and the stony 
rock, and the mummy case, on which they wrote their 
story, who had no interest in the Old Testament 
Scriptures, who disbelieved, if they ever were offered, 
the knowledge of the Gospel of Christ ; whose testi- 
mony, therefore, unswayed by prejudice, and unswerv- 
ing from any possibly false or spurious motive, must 
be accepted as a fiithful. impartial, and historic rec- 
ord. And perhaps when Dr. Colenso learns that, he 
may come to the extravagant conclusion, that some- 
body else must have written the Pentateuch; some 
Egyptian priest ; at all events he can not deny the 
facts that the stones so eloquently proclaim, and 
which are substantially the facts recorded in the 
Pentateuch. 

Here let me give another interesting flict as Cjuoted 
by Mr. Saville : — 

At Gournou, near Thebes, there is still standing the tomb of 
one of the nobles. The owner of this tomb bears the name of 
Roshera, which signifies, *'A prince like the sun!'' The paintings 
of this tomb, which are given with great fidelity in Lepsius's mag- 
nificent work, afford indisputable proof not only of the Israelites 
beiDg in Egypt at this period of history, but of being forcibly 
engaged in the rery occupation to which Scripture informs us 
they were compelled by the jealousy of the Pharaohs of that 
dynasty which knew not Joseph. One inscription, '' The recep- 
tion ©f the tribute of the land brought to the king by the captives 



WITjSTESSES to MOSES. 227 

in person." On another, " The bringing in of the offerings of the 
unclean races." These prisoners wear torn garments, are engaged 
in making bricks^ and carefully watched by Egyptian taskmasters. 

In Hengstenberg, you will find in his description 
of the various scenes and incidents spoken of by 
Moses, how thoroughly exact and historically accurate 
is the Mosaic record. Take this one. According to 
Exodus i. 14, Pharaoh embittered the life of the 
Israelites "with hard bondage, in mortar, and in 
brick." We find, from other remains, that it was 
the custom of the Israelites in that day rarely to 
burn the bricks, and generally to harden them in 
the hot sunshine; and in order to give the bricks 
cohesiveness, strav/ was mixed up with the clay. 
Hengstenberg says : — 

Bricks were made in Egypt under the direction of the king or 
some privileged person, as appears from the impressions found 
upon many of them. A great multitude of strangers were con- 
stantly employed in the brick-fields of Thebes and other parts of 
Egypt. But the most remarkable agreement with the Pentateuch 
is in the fact, that a small portion of chopped straw is found in 
the composition of the Egyptian bricks. This is evident from 
an examination of those brought by Eosellini from Thebes, on 
which is the stamp of Thothmes lY., the fifth king of the eighteenth 
dynasty. "The bricks," remarks Rosellini, "which are newfound 
in Egypt, belonging to the same period, always have straw mingled 
with them, although in some of those that are most carefully made, 
it is found in very small quantities." According to Rosellini, straw 
was used in order that the bricks, (they were not for the most part 
burned, but dried in the sun,) might be more firm, especially those 



228 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

of coarse clay and more roughly formed. Prokesch says, *' The 
bricks (of the first pyramid at Dashoor) are of fine clay from the 
Kile, mingled with chopped straw. This intermixture gives the 
bricks an astonishing durability." The inquirer will not leave un- 
noticed such little and entirely undesigned circumstances as these. 
^Ye are carried much farther by the comparison of our history 
with a picture discovered in a tomb at Thebes, of which Rosellini 
first furnished a drawing and an explanation ; " Explanation of a 
picture representing the Hebrews as they were engaged in making 
brick." We will first give an abstract of the account of Rosellini. 
"Of the laborers," says he, "some are employed in transporting 
the clay in vessels, some intermingling it with the straw ; others 
are taking the bricks out of the form and placing them in rows ; 
still others with a piece of wood upon their backs, and ropes on 
each side, carry away the bricks already burned or dried. Their 
dissimilarity to the Egyptians appears at the first view ; the com- 
plexion, physiognomy, and beard permit us not to be mistaken in 
supposing them to be Hebrews. They wear at the hips the apron 
which is common among the Egyptians, and there is also repre- 
sented as in use among them a kind of short trowsers. Among the 
Hebrews, four Egyptians, very distinguishable by their mien, figure, 
and color, are seen ; two of them, one sitting and the other stand- 
ing, carry a stick in their hand, ready to fall upon two other Egyp- 
tians, who are here represented like the Hebrews, one of them 
carrying on his shoulder a vessel of clay, and the other returning 
from the transportation of brick, carrying his empty vessel to get 
a new load. The tomb belonged to a high court officer of the 
king, Rochscere, and was made in the time of Thothmes lY., the 
fifth king of the eighteenth dynasty." The question, " How came 
this picture in the tomb of Rochscere ?" Rosellini answers as fol- 
lov/s: — "He was the overseer of the public buildings, and had, 
consequently, the charge of all the works undertaken by the king. 
There are found represented therein still other objects of a likQ 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 229 

nature ; two colossal statues of kings, a sphinx and the laborers 
who hewed the stone, — works which he by virtue of his office 
had caused to be performed in his lifetime." To the question, 
*' How came the representation of the labors of the Israelites at 
Thebes *?" it is answered, " We need not suppgse that the labors 
were performed in the very place where they are represented, for 
Rochscere was overseer of the royal buildings throughout the land, 
and what was done in the circuit of his operations could, wher- 
ever performed, be represented in his tomb at Thebes. It is also 
not impossible that the Hebrews went even to Thebes. In Ex- 
odus V. 12, it is said that they scattered themselves through the 
whole land of Egypt in order to procure straw." So far Rosellini. 
The agreement of this painting, with our account in many very 
striking points, appears at first view. We consequently select 
from them only two. 1. It is said in the narrative, the Israel- 
ites were subjected to severe labor in mortar and brick. Just so 
this servile labor appears throughout the painting as twofold ; 
some are employed upon the clay from which the bricks were 
made, and some upon the finished brick. 2. We have in this 
painting an explanation with regard to the Egyptians who accom- 
panied the Israelites in their Exodus. Of these Egyptians we 
read, first, in Exodus xii. 88, ''And also a great rabble went up 
with them." In Numbers xi. 4, . " The mixed Egyptian populace 
led astray the Israelites in the desert to discontentment." In 
Deuteronomy xxix. 10, 11, let it be observed how accurately 
these remote and disconnected passages agree with each other; 
the Egyptian aliens appear as very poor, as the lowest servants, 
as hewers of wood and drawers of water. The designations rabble 
and populace in the first passages, also show that these attend- 
ants of the Israelites belonged to the lowest grades of society. 
Just such people we should naturally expect to find in Egypt. 
Their existence is the necessary consequence of strongly marked 
caates in society. The monuments indeed place vividly before us 



230 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

most manifest distinctions in station. A part of the people ap- 
pear to be in the deep degradation which now presses upon the 
Fellahs. According to Herodotus, the caste of swineherds, a na- 
tive tribe, was unclean and despised in Egypt. All intercourse 
with the rest of the inhabitants, even entrance into a temple, 
was forbidden, and they were as much despised as the Pariahs 
in India. The contempt in which they were held was not, cer- 
tainly, the consequence of their occupation, but their occupation 
of the disdain which was felt for them. Already unclean, tliey 
had no reason for avoiding the care of unclean animals. But 
full light first falls upon these notices of the Pentateuch through 
our painting. V^e see upon it Egyptians who are placed entirely 
on an equality with the hated and despised foreigners. 'What is 
more natural than that a considerable part of these Egyptians, 
bound close to their companions in sorrow by their common 
misery, should leave with them their native land, such now to 
them only in name ? 

He who has carefully examined the engraving in Rosellini, the 
great importance of which has been acknowledged by such historians 
as Heeren, perceiving its striking accordance with the Pentateuch, 
will ask first of all, whether, then, this picture is really genuine, 
whether it is not probably a supposititious work, prepared after the 
Pentateuch was written. This question, almost sufficiently answer- 
ed by the condition of the painting itself, is, by the judicious Wil- 
kinson, who made a new examination on the spot, decided entirely in 
favor of the picture. This decision is the more to be relied on, since 
Wilkinson, while he questions whether the painting has direct refer- 
ence to the labors of the Israelites, does not deny the significance of 
it for the Pentateuch. But the arguments with which he contends 
against its referring to Israelites are of so little importance, that 
we can scarcely avoid thinking that he is influenced by something 
foreign from the thing itself; and they are decidedly outweighed by 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 281 

the evident Jewisli bearing and cast of physiognomy, which can be 
traced even in the common woodcuts, such as are found in Taylor. 

Mark well this fact, which is so remarkable. I have 
Been only the engravings, or pictures. Every body 
knows what is the distinguishing and characteristic 
Jewish contour, or countenance, or face ; it is so mark- 
ed, so distinguishable, that nobody can possibly mis- 
take it. Well, we find the Jewish face on all these 
monuments, perfectly marked, so that there can be no 
mistake that it is the countenance of the Jew, and the 
picture the representation of Jews who were en- 
gaged in that work. We also find on the monuments 
the negro, not employed in brick-making but in other 
work ; and the negro, or African face, is equally mark- 
ed and distinctive. Here is a painting, you observe, 
on an ancient monument, which shows the Israelites at 
the very period to which the chronology of the paint- 
ing refers, engaged in the very work ascribed to them 
in Scripture ; superintended, as I have noticed in the 
engraving, by hard taskmasters, each with a stick 
ready to smite the Hebi*ew that blunders in his work, 
or wearies in his hard and incessant drudgery : another 
evidence that has survived the lapse of centuries, and 
confirms, if confirmation Avere needed, the conclusion 
Ave have already come to, that the records of Moses are 
historically true, and reliable as facts. 

Let me present another instance. We read con- 
stantly in the Mosaic record of the extreme arrogance 



232 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

of the Pharaohs. We find an ilhistration of this from 
the monuments. 

"The insolent pride," says Hengstenberg, "with which Pharaoh 
received the message communicated by Moses, as, ' Who is Jehovah, 
that I should hear his voice, to let Israel go ? I know not Jeho- 
vah, and will not let Israel go.' The obstinacy which he afterward 
exhibits, when the Divine punishments fall upon him one after 
another, in deciding to go to destruction with his land and people 
rather than yield, are all proved on the monuments in various ways, 
to be in accordance with the genuine spirit of a Pharaoh." 

Now, just read the records of that memorable night 
when Pharaoh at last determined, out of desperation, 
in dread of utterly exterminating judgments, to let 
the children of Israel go ; and you have a picture there 
of Pharaoh, just as reiterated and repeated on the mon- 
uments and in the paintings of Egypt. 

"A comparison," continues Hengstenberg, "of the victory of 
Remeses Meiamun, in Thebes, explained by Champollion, is of 
special interest in this connection. The Pharaoh, it is there said, at 
whose feet they lay down these trophies of victory, (the severed 
right hand and other members of the body,) sits quietly in his char- 
iot, while his horses are held by his officers, and directs a haughty 
speech to his warriors: 'Give yourselves to mirth; let it rise to 
heaven. Strangers are dashed to the ground by my power. Terror 
of my name has gone forth ; their hearts are full of it ; I appear be- 
fore them as a lion ; I have pursued them as a hawk ; I have anni- 
hilated their wicked souls. I have passed over their rivers ; I have 
set on fire their castles ; I am to Egypt what the god Mandoo has 
been ; I have vanquished the barbarians ; Amun Ke, my father, sub- 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 283 

dued the whole world under my feet, and I am king on the throne 
forever/ " 

Now this is the boasting language, copied from the 
monuments, that you find falling from the lips of Pha- 
raoh in the Mosaic record. 

And therefore the inevitable conclusion is, that these 
monuments justify the historial accuracy of Moses ; 
as well as every touch, and sketch, and light, and shad- 
ow, on the countenances of the characters so vividly 
and so faithfully portrayed by the pen of the inspired 
historian. 

Who can fail to see in all this, God storing up cumu- 
lative proofs of the historic purity and truthfulness of 
His Holy Word ? Who can doubt that this blessed 
Word is under the guardian care of Him who sleepeth 
not, nor slumbereth ? May its opponents be led to 
other and better thoughts. 

It is important, in answer to the charge of Dr. Co- 
lenso, to show that from sources over which neither 
Jew nor Gentile had any control, we can advance the 
most conclusive evidences of the facts and events which 
Moses records. Were an unbaptized and uninstructed 
Zulu to be made acquainted with the method of inter- 
preting the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the monuments 
of Egypt, and being ignorant of the Pentateuch, left 
in the miclst of these remains to write out, from his 
study of these characters, a history of events, begin- 
ning 1,500 years before the Christian era, he would de- 
scribe facts, and persons, and events so like those re- 



234 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

corded in Genesis and Exodus, that Dr. Colenso, on 
reading them, would accuse him of plagiarism from 
the Pentateuch. 

This field of illustration is of vast extent ; extracts 
illustrative of the historic truth of the Mosaic record 
from the Egyptian monuments might be continued 
long enough to fatigue and weary the reader ; but 
some are so conclusive for Moses and the strict his- 
toric truth of his writings in the Pentateuch, that no 
apology is needed for bringing forward at least the 
most important. A monument has been discovered in 
Egypt, the inscription on which indicates that it was 
written soon after the dispersion from the plains of 
Shinar, and that the group whom it rej)resents were 
the very persons who were dispersed ©ver the earth, in 
consequence of the confusion of tongues on that mem- 
orable, and really, and truly, historic occasion. 

A singular verification (says Osburn, in his elaborate and beautiful 
work,) of the Scripture account of the dispersion of the descendants 
of Ham arises from these hieroglyphic names. Canaan, tlie first- 
born, who lost his birthright through his grandfather's curse (Gen. ix. 
25, seq.^y and is therefore always placed last among his brethren 
(chap. X. 6, etc.), nevertheless seems to have been allowed the claims 
of seniority, when the sons of Ham together went forth to the west- 
ward from the plains of Shinar (Gen. xi.), and gave his name to the 
first district at which the emigrants would arrive. The descendants 
of Gush, the second son, took the next region to the westward, which 
consisted of the sterile sands of the deserts of Sinai. The fertile 
valley of the Nile was the happier lot of Misraim, the third son ; 
while the descendants of Phut, the youngest, were driven forth to seek 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 235 

a comfortless home amid the trackless wastes of the Sahara. These 
names are all found on the monuments of Egypt (for, as we shall see 
hereafter, the hieroglyphic name of Canaan is still extant) with the 
exception of the name of Mizraim ; which may, however, possibly 
be detected in that of the well-known demigod and hero of the 
Egyptian mythology, Osiris. 

This is associated with some great event that led to 
the peopling of the heretofore uninhabited world. 
Here then is a monumental reference to the dispersion 
itself. 

The same writer says : — 

The pyramids of Ghizeh, in the burial-place of Memphis, are the 
most ancient of all the greater remains. Several of the tombs in 
their immediate vicinity also belong to the same remote period. As 
we proceed up the valley of the Nile to Beni Hassan and Abydos, the 
remains are those of the era of Osortasen ; while at Thebes, and the 
regions to the south of it, we scarcely find a trace of any thing that 
is earlier than the eighteenth dynasty. More satisfactory proof could 
scarcely be desired that the progress of the first inhabitants of the 
valley was from Heliopolis upward ; not from Thebes downward, 
as has been too hastily assumed by certain modern antiquaries. In 
this particular, therefore, the monuments of Egypt strongly confirm 
the Scripture account of the first dispersion of mankind from the 
plains of Shinar. 

Another very important and interesting fact is nar- 
rated by this same writer. It relates to the names of 
the sons of Noah. He says : — 

There is a design which is repeated in the tombs of the later kings 
of the eighteenth dynasty, and which evidently embodies the notions 
entertained by the Egyptians of the inhabitants of the earth. The 



236 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

most ancient copy of this design is in the tomb of Sethos I., -which 
was discovered by Belzoni. The picture represents four individuals 
of four races of men, who are conducted, or rather directed, by the 
Divine hawk of the sun ; denoted by the figure of an idol with a 
hawk's head. Its object is to show the superiority of Egypt over all 
other lands, through the blessing of her tutelary divinity, the sun — 
the first king of Egypt, from whom, as we have said, all his success- 
ors took their well-known title of Pharaoh, that is, (f)pe, "the sun." 
Immediately after the sun are four Egyptians, who are named 
" th^ human race," meaning, as will abundantly appear, that they 
were preeminently men above all other men. Above them is a hiero- 
glyphic inscription, which reads as follows: — "The discourse of the 
hawk governing the appearance of the sun, in the third hororary 
mansion (?. e., in the third hour of the day,) to the black land (Upper 
Egypt), and the red land (Lower Egypt). The sun, firm in his great- 
ness in heaven,, enlightens you, ye kings (of the world). He vivi- 
fies the breath of your nostrils (while ye live) ; he dries your mum- 
mies (when ye are dead). Your eyes are dazzled by my brightness, 
ye of the chief race of men." 

The appearance of the race of men next in order varies considera- 
bly in costume and complexion in the several repetitions of this pic- 
ture, which occur in the tombs of different kings ; but all the copies 
agree in representing a people of much lighter complexion than the 
Egyptians, with blue eyes, and the hair inclining to red or flaxen, or, 
in some cases, black. We shall hereafter have the opportunity of 
identifying these races with the inhabitants of Canaan and of the 
regions to the eastward of that country. In the name which is com- 
mon to them in all the copies of this picture we at once recognize the 
Shemites, the descendants of the patriarch Shem, who occupied the 
country immediately to the eastward of Canaan, and were confounded 
by the Egyptians with the inhabitants of that country : probably be- 
cause they all spoke dialects of the same language. The inscription 
is, "The sun drives ye away, ye who are named the Shemites. 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 237 

The sun is unto you as the Divine vengeance, that he may afflict 
your souls. In my manifestation I have smitten them; I curse 
them in all the seasons that I shine {i. c, at all times)." 

The next tetrad of figures in this procession are negroes, who are 
called Nahasi, which we find elsewhere to have been a general appella- 
tion of all the dark races of mankind, or rather of the inhabitants of 
the regions to the south and west of Egypt. The dresses of these 
negroes vary in different copies, like the former group. The inscrip- 
tion reads, " ye who are named the race of Nahasi, the sun (speaks 
unto) these ; he takes vengeance on their souls ; mine eye glistens 
upon them (in wrath)." 

The fourth, and last group of this curious picture consists of four 
men, of a complexion much lighter than the Shemites, and resem- 
bling in appearance the Caucasian races. "We shall find, hereafter, 
that by this group we are to understand the Hamathites, or ancient 
inhabitants of Syria, which being the farthest point to the north to 
which the geographical knowledge of the Egyptians extended, its 
name was adopted as a general appellation of all countries to the 
north of Canaan. The costumes, which vary like the rest, will be 
found described hereafter. The inscription in the tomb of Sethos, 
which is the only one that has been copied entire, is much mutilated. 
Enough of it, however, remains to show that the Hamathites were 
considered to inhabit merely a district in the region of which the 
Shemites were also inhabitants ; for, like them, they are called there ' 
and in all other copies, "the great water." It seems probable that 
this is a reminiscence of the original settlement of the inhabitants of 
Egypt, on the banks of the Euphrates, from which they were expelled 
by the confusion of tongues. The epithet of the Euphrates, *' the 
great river," which is universal to all ancient languages, appears to 
have been applied by them to those of the human race whom they 
left upon its banks, to distinguish them from the tribes who had set 
out in quest of new countries before the Egyptians. 

These names point very intelligibly to the original and natural divi» 



238 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

sion of the human race into the descendants of the three sons of 
Noah. The Shemites retain the name of their progenitor ; the Ham- 
athites represented the Japhetians ; while in the tribes already dark- 
ened by the burning sun of the tropics, who had first braved the ter- 
rors of the deserts to the south and west of Egypt, they recognized 
the sons of Ham. The vanity of the Egyptians, however, allowed 
to none of these races the slightest affinity with themselves. They 
were altogether of another and superior stock, which they erected 
into a fourth patriarchate at the head of the other three. It is pretty 
evident that the original genealogies of the several families of man- 
kind had been forgotten in Egypt at the period of the monuments we 
are now considering. A vague recollection of the triple division of 
the human race, and the name of Shem seems to have been the 
extent of their knowledge of it. 

I will now copy a very remarkable chapter from 
Hengstenberg, to whose work I have before referred, 
on the land of Goshen. He says : — 

The references of the Pentateuch to the geographical features of 
Egypt, as we should naturally expect in a book of sacred history, are 
neither numerous nor particular, yet enough of these references exist 
to show that its author possessed an accurate knowledge of the topo- 
graphy of the country to which he alludes. And the more scattered, 
incidental, and undesigned these notices are, the more certain is the 
proof which they afford that the author's knowledge was of no second- 
ary character, was not laboriously produced for the occasion ; but on 
the contrary, natural, acquired from his own personal observation, 
and was such as to preserve him from every mistake, without the 
necessity of his being constantly on his guard. 

Let us direct our attention, first, to what the author says of the la7id 
of Goshen. He nowhere gives a direct and minute account of the 
situation of this land. But it is evident that this must be referred 
to some other cause than his ignorance, since he communicates, in 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 239 

reference to it, a great number of separate circumstances -wliich, al- 
though some of them appear at first view to be entirely at variance 
with each other, are yet found to be entirely consistent, when applied 
to a particular district. 

The land of Goshen appears, on the one hand^ as the eastern bor- 
der-land of Egypt. Thus it is said. Gen. xlvi. 28 : "And he (Jacob) 
sent Judah before him unto Joseph, to direct his face unto Goshen." 
That Jacob should send Judah before him, to receive from Joseph 
the necessary orders for the reception of those entering the coun- 
try, is entirely in accordance with the regulations of a well-organ- 
ized kingdom, whose borders a wandering tribe is not permitted to 
pass unceremoniously. This account also agrees accurately with 
the information furnished on this point by the Egyptian monu- 
ments. That Jacob did not obtain the orders of Joseph until he 
was at Goshen, shows that this was the border-land. We come to 
the same result also from chap, xlvii. 1. *'And Joseph came and 
told Pharaoh, and said. My father and my brethren are come out 
of the land of Canaan, and behold they are in the land of Goshen." 
It is most natural that they should remain in the border province 
until the matter was laid before the king. This is also confirmed 
by Gen. xlvi. 84: "And ye shall say. Thy servants' trade hath 
been about cattle, from our youth even until now ; that ye may 
dwell in the land of Goshen ; for every shepherd is an abomination 
unto the Egyptians ;" for this passage can only be explained on 
the supposition that Goshen is a frontier province, which could be 
assigned to the Israelites, without placing them in close contact 
with the Egyptians, who hated their manner of life. Finally, the 
circumstance that the Israelites under Moses, after they had assem- 
bled at the principal town of the land, had reached in two days 
the confines of the Arabian desert, points to Goshen as the eastern 
boundary. 

On the other handy Goshen appears again as lying in the neigh- 
borhood of the chief city of Egypt. Thus in Gen. xlv. 10: "And 



240 THE STOXES OF EGYPT 

thou sbalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near to 
me" (to Joseph, who dwelt in the principal city of Egypt). The 
Pentateuch nowhere expressly mentions which was this chief city 
of Egypt, just as the surname of no one of the reigning Pharaohs 
is mentioned by Moses, and for the same reason. Yet the neces- 
sary data for designating this city are found. It must, at any rate, 
have been situated in Lower Egypt, for this appears in the Pen- 
tateuch generally as the seat of the Egyptian king. But the re- 
markable passage, Numbers xiii. 23 : *' And Hebron was built seven 
years before Zoan of Egypt," points us directly to Zoan or Tanis, 
and at the same time plainly shows that the reason why the author 
did not mention the chief city by name can be sought in any thing 
rather than in his ignorance concerning it. That Zoan is here di- 
rectly named by way of comparison, implies, first, that it was one 
of the oldest cities in Egypt. Secondly, that it held the first rank 
among the Egyptian cities, and stood in the most important con- 
nection with the Israelites. Hebron, the city of the patriarch, 
could be made more conspicuous only by a comparison with the 
chief city of Egypt, arrogant and proud of its antiquity ; and there 
was no motive for such a comparison, except with a city which 
by its arrogance had excited the jealousy of the Israelites. The 
designation, Zoan of Egypt, which means more than that the city 
lay in Egypt, also indicates that this was the chief city. What is 
here only intimated is expressly affirmed in Psalm Ixxviii. 12, 43, 
where it is said, Moses performed his wonders "in the field of 
Zoan." In accordance with the foregoing intimations, which bring 
us into the chief city, Moses is exposed on the bank of the Nile, 
Exodus ii. 3 ; and at the place where the king's daughter was ac- 
customed to bathe, verse 5 ; and the mother of the child lived in 
the immediate vicinity, verse 8. They had fish in abundance. Num. 
xi. 5 ; they watered their land as a garden of herbs, Deut. xi. 10. 
Further, the land of Goshen, on the one hand, is described as a 
pasture ground. So in the passage above referred to, Gen» xlvi. 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 241 

34, and also in chap, xlvii. 4 : ^' I'liey said moreover unto Pharaoii, 
To sojourn in the land are we come ; for thy servants have no 
pasture for their flock ; for the famine is sore in the land of Ca- 
naan ; now therefore we pray thee let thy servants dwell in the 
land of Goshen." 

On the other hand, the land of Goshen appears as one of the 
most fruitful regions of Egypt ; chap, xlvii. 6 : "In the best of the 
land make thy father and brethren to dwell." Also in verse 11 
of the same chapter: "And he gave them a possession in the land 
of Egypt, in the , best of the land, in the land of Rameses." The 
Israelites employed themselves in agriculture, Deut. xi. 10 ; and 
obtained in rich abundance, Num. xi. 5, the products which Egypt, 
fertilized by the Nile, afforded its inhabitants. 

All these circumstances harmonize, and the different points, dis- 
crepant as they may seem, find their application, when we fix upon 
the land of Goshen as the region east of the Tanitic arm of the 
Nile, as far as the Isthmus of Suez, or the border of the Arabian 
desert, Ex. xiii. 20. Goshen then comprised a tract of country 
very various in its nature. A great part of it was a barren land, 
suitable only for the pasturage of cattle. Yet it also had very 
fruitful districts, so that it combined in itself the peculiarities of 
Arabia and Egypt. To it belonged a part of the land on the east- 
ern shore of the Tanitic branch of the Nile ; also the whole of the 
Pelusiac branch, with both its banks, which, as late as the time of 
Alexander the Great, was navigable — through it his fleet pressed 
into Egypt — but is now almost entirely filled up with the sand of 
the desert ; while the Tanitic arm, being further removed from the 
desert, has sustained itself better. Between two branches of the 
Pelusiac canal lies the island Mycephoris, which, in ancient times, 
was inhabited by the Calasiries, or a part of the military caste. 
Of this island Ritter says: — "At this present time it is a well-cul- 
tivated plain, full of great palm-groves and opulent villages." 
" Generally/* continues the same author, " the country here is by 
11 



242 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

no means barren ; the water of the canal diffuses its blessings 
everywhere. Thus there lies upon the canal, about fifteen miles 
below Bustah, the little modern village Heyeh, surrounded by rich 
palm-groves, which is almost entirely unknown to recent geogra- 
phers ; but in its vicinity is a luxuriance of vegetation which makes 
the country appear like a European garden." So is it even now 
with this region, notwithstanding the great bogs and sand-heaps 
which have been here formed in the course of a hundred years. 
Even in the interior of the ancient land of Goshen there is still a 
large tract of land good for tillage, and fruitful. "^ There is, for 
example, a valley which stretches through the whole breadth of 
this province from west to east, and in which, as we shall hereafter 
see, the ancient chief city of this province lay. This tract of land, 
from the ancient Babastes, on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, even 
to the entrance of the Wady Tumilat, is, according to Le Pere, even 
now under full cultivation, and is annually overflowed by the Nile. 
Also a great part of Wady Tumilat is susceptible of cultivation, 
and likewise the eastern part of the valley, which is very accu- 
rately delineated upon the chart of Lower Egypt, in the atlas of 
Ritter's geography, the tract from Ras el "Wady to Serapeum, fur- 
nishes not merely pasture grounds, but also land suitable for cul- 
tivation. 

It is certain that the Pentateuch in the intimations, evidently 
undesigned, which it gives of the position and nature of the land 
of Goshen in the most disconnected passages, is always consistent 
with itself; as, for example, in one whole series of passages it 
alludes to the fact that the Israelites dwelt upon the Nile, and in 
another that they dwelt in a border land in the direction of Arabia. 
This fact, as also the circumstance that all its allusions to the po- 
sition and nature of the land are substantiated by actual geogra- 
phy, without the most distant reference to an imaginary land, are 
not explicable, if the author was dependent on uncertain reports 
for his information. On the contrary, the whole serves to impress 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 243 

us with the coDviction that he, as would be the case with Moses, 
wrote from personal observation, with the freedom and confidence 
of one to whom the information communicated naturally and of 
its own accord, and from one who has not obtained it for a pro- 
posed object. 

Hengstenberg, speaking of the genealogical table 
in Genesis, remarks, — • 

It has often been asserted that the genealogical table in Gen. x., 
can not be from Moses ; since so extended a knowledge of nations 
lies far beyond the geographical horizon of the Mosaic age. This 
hypothesis must now be considered as exploded. The new dis- 
coveries and investigations in Egypt have shown that they main- 
tained even from the most ancient times a vigorous commerce with 
other nations, and sometimes with very distant nations. The 
proofs are found in Creuzer, Heeren, in my contributions, and in 
Wilkinson. This last author, among other things, remarks, that 
the strongest proof for the commerce of the Egyptians with dis- 
tant nations of Asia, is furnished by the materials out of which 
many of the articles in use, in civil and domestic use, found in the 
tombs of Thebes, which belong to the 18th or 19th dynasty, arc 
made in Egypt ; for example, — the vessels of wood, which arc 
commonly made of foreign wood, and not seldom of the mahogany 
of India. But not merely in general do the investigations in 
Egyptian antiquities favor the belief that Moses was the author of 
the account in the tenth chapter of Genesis. On the Egyptian 
monuments, those especially which represent the conquests of the 
ancient Pharaohs over foreign nations — conquests which, certainly, 
were oftener achieved in imagination than in reality, as indeed 
the almost regular occurrence of these representations under nearly 
all the ancient Pharaohs shows, so that nothing can be more erro- 
neous than the present popular way of relying upon them without 
inquiry, as sources of historical truth — not a few names have been 



244 THE STONES OF EGYPT 

found which correspond with those contained in the chapter before 
us. We will here speak only of those where the agreement is 
perfectly certain. It must be allowed that far more still could be 
effected if our knowlege of hieroglyphics were not so very im- 
perfect. 

Among the sons of Japheth (in verse 2), Meshech and Tiras arc 
mentioned in close connection. Among the Asiatic nations which 
are represented on the monuments as engaged in war with the Egyp- 
tians, the Toersha also appear, according to Wilkinson. They are 
shown, indeed, among the nations who are said to have been con- 
quered by the third Rameses. Their identity with Tiras is the less 
doubtful, since another nation, the Mashoash, is named along with 
them. These last, Wilkinson designates as " another Asiatic nation 
who resemble the former in their general features, and the shape of 
their beards." The agreement between Meshech and Tiras on the 
one side, and Mashoash and Toersha on the other, is the less exposed 
to suspicion, since Wilkinson did not think to place both in connec- 
tion, as indeed in general, the present attempt at comparing the names 
of the people represented on the monuments with those found in 
Gen. X. is the first. 

Among the sons of Japheth (in the same verse), Javan — the 
lonians, or Greeks — is mentioned. According to Rosellini, the 
Uoinin (the lonians) are found among others, in a symbolic paintiug, 
representing king Menephthah L, the 12th king of the 18th dynasty, 
as in the sight of Amon-re he slays one individual of each of the 
conquered nations. These same people were also mentioned on the 
monuments which belong to Thothmes Y. 

Among the sons of Gomer, the son of Japhet, consequently, as a 
Japhetic nation, Riphat is mentioned in verse 3, probably identical 
with the Pouont, or Pount, who are represented on the monuments 
as engaged in war with the Egyptians, as early as the time of Amun- 
m-gori II., which the more recent chronologers place at about the 
year 1680 b.o. 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 245 

Among the sons of Ham (in verse 5), Cusli is first mentioned. The 
Gush, according to Wilkinson, are represented among the African 
people who are conquered by the monarchs of the eighteenth or 
nineteenth dynasty. "These" (the Gush), he remarks, "were long 
at war with the Egyptians ; and a part of their country, which was 
reduced at a very remote period by the arms of the Pharaohs, was 
obliged to pay an annual tribute to the conquerors." According to 
Rosellini, the victory of King Horus over the same people, is repre- 
sented on a monument at Selsilis. According to the same author, 
they appear in the painting already referred to, among the nations 
conquered by Menephthah I. Eleven separate Gushite tribes are 
there mentioned in agreement with verse 7, according to which Gush 
is not the name of a separate tribe, but of several tribes belonging 
to one general family. 

As the second son of Ham, the second Hamitisli head of a family, 
Mizraim is mentioned. This name was, as the dual form signifies, 
originally the name of the land. The division of the land into the 
upper and lower regions to which it refers, appears on the monu- 
ments even in the most ancient times. In proof of this, see Wilkin- 
son and Ghampoliion's " Letters," where an inscription is quoted, "I 
give thee the upper and the lower Egypt, in order that you may rule 
over them as king." 

According to verse 13, Mizraim was tne progenitor among other 
nations, of the Lehabim and Naphtuhim. It serves for a confirma- 
tion of the statement that the Lybians (the Lehabim) are an offshoot 
from the Egyptians, that they, even to the time of the Ptolemies, 
were considered a part of the Egyptians. Ghampollion affirms, that 
he found Niphaiat (= Naphtuchin) on the monuments as a name of 
Lybian nations. 

The Canaanites and Amorites (called Asmaori) are represented on 
the Egyptian monuments with Lemanon (the people of Lebanon) 
and Ascalon. The land Ganana is specifically named among the in- 
scriptions upon a representation of the triumph of Menephthah I., 



246 THE STOXES OF EGYPT 

together with the regioo of Xahareina or Mesopotamia, and Singara 
or Sincar. In reference to a representation of a campaign of Osirei, 
the father of Rameses the Great, Wilkinson says, ''The country of 
Lemanon is shown by the artist to have been mountainous, inacces- 
sible to chariots, and abounding in lofty trees, which the affrighted 
mountaineers are engaged in felling, in order to impede the march of 
the invading army. The Egyptian monarch, having taken by assault 
the fortified towns on the frontier, advances with the light infantry 
in pursuit of the fugitives, who had escaped and taken shelter in the 
woods, and sending a herald to offer terms on condition of their sur- 
render ; the chiefs are induced to trust to his clemency, and return 
to their allegiance, as are those of Canana, whose strongholds yield 
in like manner to the arms of the conqueror." It is readily seen 
from these representations, with what justice an argument against 
the Pentateuch has been derived from the knowledge of Canana 
which its author exhibits. 

"The sons of Shem," it is said, in verse 22, " are Elam, and Asshur, 
and Arphaxad, and Ltcd^ and Aram." 

It is in the highest degree probable that Asshur appears on the 
monuments under the name Shari. That the Shari, who especially 
under the reign of Osirei and his son Rameses the Great, are repre- 
sented as engaged in war with the Egyptians, are the Assyrians, is 
indicated not only by the name but by the similarity of dress between 
them and the captives of Tirhaka. 

The Ludim act a conspicuous part on the Egyptian monuments. 
In a representation of a triumph of Menephthah L, five foreign na- 
tions are found — the Romenen, the Seios, the people Ots, from the 
land of Omar ; the Tohen, and the Seeto. All of these, with the 
exception of Ots, are represented in the inscriptions as belonging to 
the land of Ludim. And of the whole expedition it is repeatedly 
said, that it was directed against the people of the land of Ludim, 
which is in accordance with the Book of Genesis, in which likewise 
Lud is not represented as a single tribe, but as an entire nation. 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 247 

Since in these same inscriptions the land of Canana is also named, 
and the region of Nahareina and Singara, just as in Genesis Lud is 
closely connected T^'ith Aram, Rosellini argues that the land Ludim 
lay in the neighborhood of Canana and Mesopotamia, and he asserts 
that it must be sought in the western part of Asia. 

Every reader must see the force of these scattered 
illustrations. These varied references prove in every 
case, first, that Moses must have been personally ac- 
quainted with the geography, habits, and customs of 
the Egyptian people of the time in which he lived. 
Secondly, that he has accurately described scenes and 
persons proved by the monuments to have been what 
he says they were, and therefore that he had been a 
resident in Egypt. Third, that therefore the charge 
adduced by the Bishop of Natal — that Moses proba- 
bly never existed, that if he did, he was not the author 
of the Pentateuch, and that, whoever was the author, 
he states fancies for facts, and idle traditions as truth 
— is unfounded. The very stones cry out against the 
conclusions of the Bishop of I^atal, and j)rotest with 
a thousand tongues that Moses is right, and Dr. Colenso 
wrong. 

How marvelous that Providence directed Champol- 
lion and Young to the Rosetta Stone, and thus disclosed 
the key that unlocks and the law that deciphers inscri]^- 
tions three thousand years old ! How marvelous that 
the Egyptians were led to inscribe in indelible letters 
on the rocks and stones the leading events and scenes 
of their history and social life ! How marvelous that 



248 THE STOXES OF EGYPT 

in the nineteenth century the very stones that were en- 
graved in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
should be laid bare in the light of day ! 

I am told that it is impossible to turn this Bishop 
out of the episcojDacy which he has desecrated and per- 
verted ; and therefore it becomes the more obligatory 
upon every one who, like myself, has turned his atten- 
tion to the claim of the Bible, as I was forced to do a 
good many years ago, to bring forward the irresistible 
evidences that the worthy Bishop is utterly mistaken ; 
that either through ignorance, or rashness, or from some 
other reason I can not explain, he has made assertions 
which are directly untrue, and which can be proved to 
be untrue ; and that when the comparison is fairly and 
impartially made, the old fact will stand out clear as 
the stars in the sky, God's TTord, from the Pentateuch 
to the Apocalypse, is plain, indestructible, historic truth. 
Sooner may Canute repel the advancing tide ; sooner 
may Xerxes control the Hellespont by casting a chain 
across its waters ; sooner may Caligula command the 
clouds with success not to rain down upon his royal 
head, than priest or prelate. Bishop of Xatal or Bishop 
of Rome, shake the solid foundations of that blessed 
book which, as Locke has said, and I have often repeat- 
ed, has God for its author, truth without any mixture 
of alloy for its matter, and the j^resent and the eternal 
happiness of mankind for its issue. 

I look upon these ilhistrative facts as most important. 
They prove to the school of Colenso that Moses not 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 249 

only taught the way to heaven, as the gospels inform 
us, but that all he has stated in his pictures of men, in 
his sketches of events, in his references to Egypt, in 
his portraits of character, in his history of incidents, 
and acts, and revolutions, is historically true ; that all 
his writings are, from beginning to end, Avhat our re- 
formers, and our confessors, and articles declare — can- 
onical Scriptures, preaching Christ, and teaching the 
way to the Father. 



11* 



CHAPTER XI. 

FURTHER MONUMENTAL WITNESSES TO MOSES. 

It has been asserted in the highest quarters, and not 
by a solitary individual, but by many who belong to 
the same school, that Moses is not a reliable annalist 
of facts ; that what he states as historic events never 
occurred ; that the Pentateuch is to a great extent a 
composite of fables, traditions, romances, fancies ; that 
there is no reason to believe that Moses was inspired 
to write what is not true ; and that he is not to be ac- 
cepted as a credible and authentic historian. We 
have already seen that Moses preaches Christ, and 
must have been inspired to sketch a photograph of one 
that came into the world 1,500 years afterwards. We 
have seen that the Saviour gives His attestation to 
Moses. We have also gathered from the Egyptian 
monuments some proofs of the authenticity of the 
Pentateuch. 

We will now present a few additional illustrative 
facts in the same direction. Suppose Moses is silent, 
the stones of the monuments, the sarcophagi of the 
Pharaohs, the last resting-places of a thousand mum- 
mies, signet rings from the beds of rivers, seals from 
the ruins of ancient Babylon and buried Nineveh, all 
come up and silently exhibit, substantially, allusions to 



FUKTHER MONUMENTAL WITNESSES. 251 

those very events which the Bishop of ISTatal says are 
not true. So that if he will not hear Moses, he may 
perhaps be persuaded when dead kings rise from their 
graves and attest w^hat Moses said ; he may also hear, 
though none are so deaf as those that won't hear, the 
very stones crying out that Moses is right, and the 
Bishop utterly and disastrously wrong. 

"We find the whole valley of Sinai, in the Sinaitic 
Peninsula, covered with stones on which are what 
seem to be remarkable inscriptions of events and 
scenes that have passed away. A Bishop of the 
Church of Ireland ofiered £500 to any one that would 
decipher them. Several experiments have been made, 
some with more success than others. It is at least 
singular that the very scene where God Almighty 
wrote with His finger on the hard granite the Ten 
Commandments of the Law, should also be the scene 
of rocks covered Avitli inscriptions in symbolic char- 
acters, and in many cases in a language we have 
not been able to penetrate. In the account of the 
Law it is stated in Exodus xxxi. 18 ; "And God gave 
unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing 
with him upon Mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, 
tables of stone, written with the finger of God." We 
also read that Moses, when he came down from the 
mount, and heard the shouts of the peoj^le, let the 
slabs fall; the weight, one would suppose, can not 
have been very great ; and they were broken to pieces. 
I stated, in a previous lecture, that it is just possible 



252 FURTHER MOXUMEXTAL 

that the ark may be found still remaining in the clefts 
of Ararat, having settled m the hollow between the 
two mountain peaks, when there was no snov>^ ; for if 
any, it had been swept away by the Flood ; and then 
the snow, and tlje ice, and the avalanche having 
accumulated above it thousands of feet in depth, 
never yet penetrated by man; — it is just possible, 
that in such intensely low temperature decay may 
be completely arrested. But what a startling dis- 
covery, if the Bishop of Xatal were yet to live to 
hear that the remains of the ark have been discovered 
on Ararat I Its voice would surely penetrate the 
most impenetrable ear, and he would renounce and 
repent of his rash assertion that the Flood is a myth, 
and the ark a delusion and a dream. In the same 
manner, it is perfectly possible — I do not say there 
is much chance of the discovery — that the very stones 
— the broken stones on which the finger of the Al- 
mighty engraved in imperishable sculpture the living 
and the lasting laws of morality, of righteousness, 
may yet be found. Mount Sinai gives no evidence 
whatever of having been the scene, the recent scene, 
of volcanic eruption; it is composed of granite, as 
stated by travelers, of the most beautiful and valu- 
able description ; and granite stones have been suc- 
cessively taken from it ; and on those stones there 
are inscriptions, copies of which I have seen, partly 
in Arabic letters, partly in broken Samaritan Hebrew, 
and partly in unknown characters ; and though £500 



WITIs^ESSES TO MOSES. 253 

have been offered for deciphering them, no one seems 
to have yet earned the reward. One of them, how- 
ever, has been deciphered by the Rev. C. Forster, 
a clergyman of the Church of England, who copied 
several inscriptions found upon the rocks — some not 
on the granite, but on the red sandstone, on the route 
from Suez to Sinai ; and one of them contains the 
first line of the blessing that Aaron w^as commanded 
to pronounce uj)on the children of Israel. It is trans- 
lated literally from the Arabic, "The everlasting 
Jehovah bless thee." Now, a Mahometan can not 
have sculptured it, for it is older than the era of 
Mahomet. It is not probable that a Christian did so. 
It may be a fragment of a rock on which the Aaron- 
itic blessing was engraved, the moe.o familiar benedic- 
tion in all the usage of the ancient religious ritual of 
Israel : " The Lord bless thee and keep thee ; the Lord 
make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto 
thee ; the Lord lift up the light of his countenance 
upon thee, and give thee peace." 

But I turn to some stones at present of far more per- 
tinent and relative significance. We read, for instance, 
in 2 Kings xvii. 5, " Then the king of Assyria came 
up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, 
and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of 
Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried 
Isi-ael away into Assyria, and placed them in Ilalah 
and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities 
of the Medes." Here is the record, given by inspira- 



254 rUKTHER MONUMENTAL 

tion, of the beginning of the captivity of the ten tribes 
— a record which is not admitted to be historical by 
the Bishop to Avhom I have referred, but supposed to 
be apocryphal. If the Bishop disbelieves Moses, let 
him hear the rocks. We find this captivity of the ten 
tribes confirmed by discoveries of inscriptions that have 
been sculptured on the rock. I have seen an engrav- 
ing descriptive of the occurrence of this very captivity 
of the ten tribes, in a gang of captives tied by a rope 
round the neck of each, moving in line, one behind the 
other. The king of Assyria stands receiving them; 
his right foot is trampling upon the breast of one 
poor captive, who throws up his hands in agony. 
Other seven or eight follow in succession, tied one to 
the other by a continuous rope ; their countenances 
unmistakably Jewish, for the Jewish type is visible 
upon every feature. It is a singular fact, that all 
the monumental inscriptions of Egypt are real pic- 
tures, exact and true miniatures, of acts of persons 
that actually lived. And the last of the captives in 
the gang, if I may use the phrase, has a miter on his 
head, indicating that he belonged to the house of 
Levi, and was a Jewish priest. Sir Robert Ker Porter 
concludes from this, that the sculpture undoubtedly 
refers to the conquest of Israel and the captivity of 
the ten tribes by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria and of 
the Medes. Suppose that the Bishop should deny 
that the book of Kings contains history, let him read 
the monuments, let him hear the stones crying out in 
eloquent protest, God's Word is truth. 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 255 

I notice another incident illustrative of the same. A 
signet has been found in the ruins of ancient Babylon, 
amidst the brick and debris of the ancient tower of 
Babel, representing (I have seen the engraving of it) 
a victorious charioteer standing in his chariot. Before 
him is a lion, wounded by two or three arrows that 
have been shot into his head and heart, — that lion 
meant to represent the lion of the tribe of Judah. 
And behind the lion is a palm-tree, conveying unmis- 
takably the impression that it refers to Judea, the 
palm-tree being its characteristic national symbol. 
Here, then, you have another indirect evidence of the 
same fact, of which I have given already one proof. 
And Sir Robert Ker Porter, who records this, says 
that " even to this day the banks of the Euphrates are 
hoary with reeds, and the gray osier willow yet abounds 
upon its banks, on some of which the captives of Israel 
hung their harps when they remembered Zion." 

Let me mention another confirmatory incident. We 
read in 2 Chronicles xii. 9, " So Shishak, king of Egypt, 
came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treas- 
ures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the 
king's house ;" and this occurred in the reign of Re- 
hoboam, the son of Solomon, avIio became tributary to 
Shishak. It is stated in the book of Chronicles that 
Rehoboam was taken captive, that the treasures of the 
house of the Lord were also taken, and that Jerusalem 
was taken by Shishak, the king of Egypt. Is this an 
historical fact, or is it not ? Suppose that you ignore 



256 FURTHER MONUMENTAL 

the statement of tlie inspired writer, let us ask if there 
is any collateral or illustrative proof in the discoveries 
of the monuments. In a sculpture at Karnak is dis- 
covered Sliishak dragging the chiefs of thirty nations. 
His name, inscribed in hieroglyphic characters, is Shi- 
shak ; and among the captives, one engraving I have 
seen represents Rehoboam ; and under the figure of 
Rehoboam, one of the captives, with a Jewish face so 
marked as to be ultra- Jewish, is written in hierogly- 
phics, Yehuda Melek^ " The King of Judea." Now, 
recollect this was inscribed nearly 3,000 years ago. 
And what is the amount of it ? Why, just this, that 
the very incident recorded in 2 Chronicles was record- 
ed by an independent historian, who could have no in- 
terest in recording it, except simply to celebrate the 
actual triumphs and the conquests of a victorious king 
of Egypt ; certainly not with the idea of meeting the 
difficulties of the Bishop of Natal, and proving that 
Avhat he says is a myth is — what it does prove to be — 
literal and actual fact. 

Mr. Murray, who has written upon this subject, says 
— (I do not give you the facts in any historical succes- 
sion ; they are so interesting and so important that 
each by itself is an independent witness to the historic 
claims of Moses and the Old Testament Scripture) — 
"An ancient Egyptian coin is in my possession on 
which are seven ears of corn, and the reaper cutting 
it down." Another coin also he has obtained, on 
which are seven ears of corn all bound together, the 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 257 

idea conveyed being a plentiful harvest. ISTow, connect 
that with the seven years of famine and the seven 
years of abundance, under Joseph in Egypt, and you 
have, if not a conclusive, at least a highly probable 
reference to the famine and the plenty ; at all events 
to the usages of speaking in the land of Egypt. 

Another interesting fact is that stated by Belzoni. 
I have seen the engraving he describes. He found in 
the tomb of one of the ancient Egyptian kings the en- 
graving of an ark of bulrushes floating up the Nile, 
and in the ark an infant with a hawk's head, — the 
Egyptian way of representing the highest wisdom ; 
and therefore the idea taught by the bulrush ark float- 
ing on the Il^ile, Avith an infant in it, seated, with a 
hawk head instead of a human head, is simply this, 
that some child of marvelous wisdom had been pre- 
served in an ark of bulrushes, floating on the Nile. 
Turn to the Book of Exodus, and what the Bishop 
calls a myth we find recorded upon the monumental 
stones of Egypt ; by people that never believed in the 
Bible, nor cared any thing about its claims ; but whose 
independent testimony at the present time is of incal- 
culable value. 

Let me pass on a little later to some other interest- 
ing illustrations. We are Protestants, and we ought 
to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in us ; 
and the reason is so overwhelming, and the force of 
proof so triumphant, that I can not do better than 
rivet in your memory these most important and sug- 



258 FUETHEIi MOXUMEXTAL 

gestive facts. Sir Robert Ker Porter, to whom I have 
alluded, and Mr. Kettle, hare collected illustrative 
inscriptions, of events and circumstances in the history 
of Daniel. Xow, the Book of Daniel is one of the 
books that the rationalists have waged exterminating 
war against. The fact is, these people do not like 
projDhecy at all, and they especially dislike doing what 
I have always tried to do, and what, by God's grace, 
I mean to do — taking every word of prophecy as God's 
inspired record, and holding it just as God has given 
it, as the word of truth. But they say it is all myth, 
and romance ; and they prefer to dilute it and explain 
it away, till at last it is evaporated into myths and 
metaphors the most extravagant and airy. Sir Robert 
Ker Porter says, '• There is a block of gray granite 
which has been discovered in the western 2)alace of 
Babylon, which probably crowned one of the gates of 
the palace of the king of Babylon. On this block of 
gray granite is a huge lion, standing over the prostrate 
figure of a man, who is crushed by it.'' There is no 
record ; there is simply the picture. Also, the same 
authority says, '• They fished up from the bed of the 
river Euphrates, on which Babylon stood, various silver 
coins. On the reverse of the coins are castellated 
buildings, each of them over dens of lions ;" certainly 
so far illustrative and allusive. '- On the obverse of 
one of the coins is a man in mortal conflict ♦with a 
lion." On the obverse of another coin is the figure of 
a man, his features those of a Jew. He is standing- 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 259 

with a foot upon each of two sphinxes that look up ; 
while two lions stand erect, one on the right and the 
other on the left ; he takes the paw of one with his 
right hand, and the paw of the other with his left 
hand, and seems to be in perfect safety, or to be the 
sovereign ruler of the wild and ferocious beasts. I do 
not say there is any inscription ; but read the story of 
Daniel, and the mode of punishment by lions in his 
day ; read his personal immunity in the lion's den, and 
you can not fail to infer if this be not an actual picture 
of Daniel laying his hands upon the fierce brutes, and 
the animals touched by One higher than he, feeling 
friendship, and resting in peace ; and if not the very 
representative thing itself, illustrative at least of some 
fact very much like it, and analogous to it. There is 
another stone, very remarkable, a relic of Susa — and 
you recollect Daniel was governor of Susa as well as 
governor of Babylon. Sir Robert Ker Porter thus de- 
scribes it : " It does not exceed ten inches in width 
and depth, and measures twenty inches in length. It 
is hollow w^ithin, as if to receive some deposit. Three 
of its sides are cut in bas relief; two of them have 
similar representations of a man apparently naked ex- 
cept a sash round his waist, and a sort of cap upon his 
head. His hands are bound behind him. The corner 
of the stone forms the neck of the figure. Two lions, 
in sitting postures, appear on each side at the toj), 
having each a paw ujyon his head." Read the account 
of Daniel, bound, and cast into the lions' den ; and you 



260 FURTHER MOXUMEXTAL 

have upon the stone an illustration of the very fact re- 
corded in the Book of Daniel, and the strongest pos- 
sible presumption, therefore, that Daniel records what 
is historic and literal truth. 

I pass on to another incident, illustrative of another 
event in the history of Daniel ; and after that, I will 
revert to the Pentateuch. There was found, it appears 
in the ruins of Babylon, a coin which is in the posses- 
sion of a gentleman of the name of Burgoyne. On this 
coin are engraven three figures of men in a burning 
furnace. Outside the furnace is a hideous and gigantic 
idol ; and round the idol are two or three people wor- 
shiping and giving homage to it. Read the story of 
the three Hebrew youths, the furnace and the idol on 
Dura ; and recollect, tliese coins, fished from the bed 
of the Euphrates, are not one of them less than, pro- 
bably, 2,500 years old, and must be descriptive of co- 
temporaneous or memorable historic facts. So that 
not only the stones on the wall, the rocks in the desert, 
but the very river throws up its buried treasures, and 
it is my privilege to bring forward the facts, to demon- 
strate to you how absurdly, how rashly, how unphilo- 
sophically — to take the faintest estimate of his con- 
duct — the unhappy Bishoj) has spoken who states that 
these events recorded in Scripture are not facts, but 
myths, and fimcies, and delusions. 

The Rev. Mr. Saville, from whom I have often 
quoted, states the following incident. The book 
from which .he draws his extracts is Lepsius, who 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 261 

was employed and j)aid all his expenses by the Prus- 
sian Government, to take drawings of what he found 
upon the Egyptian monuments ; and he has done it 
in the most perfect way. The book is in the Bri- 
tish Museum, where you can easily see it. I am 
no German scholar, otherwise I would have copied 
the extracts from it for myself; but those who speak 
German will be able no doubt to enjoy very much 
the reading of the work. The Rev. Mr. Saville, 
who copies from it, says, '' Between the reigns of 
Chebron, Amenophis I., and his successor Tuthmosis 
the First, there was a regency in Egypt, when Ames- 
sis, or Sesamen, as it reads in the hieroglyphics, the 
daughter of Amosis, governed either in her own 
right, or in behalf of a younger relation." On an 
obelisk of granite erected by her at Thebes, which 
is one of the most splendid monuments of that coun- 
try, she bears, among other titles, such as "royal 
wife," "royal sister," the significant one, "Pharaoh's 
daughter ;" the only occurrence of such a name given 
to any female among the hieroglyphics and on the 
monuments. We find that this very same regency 
was cotemporaneous Avith the era and birth of Moses. 
This seems, therefore, to show that this lady, not 
having children of her own, adopted Moses after she 
had preserved him from the cifect of Pharaoh's cruel 
edict ; and that, in consequence of the subsequent re- 
fusal of Moses to mount the throne of Egypt — choos- 
ing affliction with the people of God rather tlian the 



262 FURTHER MONUMENTAL 

pleasures of sin for a season ; preferring the reproach 
of Israel to the riches of Egypt — the throne passed 
to Tuthmosis the First, who appears upon the mon- 
uments as the son of Amosis, but was probably only 
a near kinsman. I do not say that the demonstration 
is perfect ; but here is the remarkable coincidence 
that, at the birth of Moses, a woman inter-reigned ; 
that woman is described on the monuments as " Pha- 
raoh's daughter" — the very phrase that the apostle 
Paul and Moses apply to her. We find that she, 
after her interregnum, was succeeded by a distant 
kinsman ; that she had no children ; that she adopted 
Moses, whom she meant to be a Pharaoh, and king 
of Egypt, who, however, preferred the reproach of 
Christ to the riches of Egypt ; a choice that he never 
repented of on earth, and repents not of now in 
heaven. Is it not highly probable that this is the 
very Pharaoh's daughter that clasped the babe in her 
bosom, nourished him, taught him the wisdom of 
Egypt, would have made him king; though he, in- 
spired by a heavenly influence, and actuated by a sub- 
limer motive, preferred the desert wdth allegiance to 
his God, to the splendid palatial glory of Pharaoh 
with denial of that Jesus in whom he believed ? 

Let me notice another incident, also very striking. 
It is this. Dr. Hincks has discovered, and not very 
long ago, on the Ximroud obelisk, the following 
name, "Jehu, the son of Omri." The very inscrip- 
tion on the rocks is the repetition of the name in 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 263 

Scripture ; and it proves this, at least, that Israel and 
Assyria must have had some connection, seeing that 
an Israelitish name is engraved upon an Assyrian 
rock, and so far justifying the record of the captivity 
of the ten tribes. 

What is said in Scripture of Hezekiah being van- 
quished by Sennacherib, has been found by Layard, 
the present member for the borough of Southwark, 
on the rock. It has been subsequently translated by 
Sir Henry Rawlinson. It is an inscription of the an- 
nals of his reign on the palace of Luxor. The Scrip- 
ture incident recorded in it, is found in 2 Kings xviii. 
13, and I wish particularly to notice the Scripture 
words, in order that you may see how perfectly 
parallel is the hieroglyphic record. " Now, in the 
fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib, 
king of Assyria, come up against all the fenced cities 
of Judah, and took them. And Hezekiah, king of 
Judah, sent to the king of Assyria, to Lachish, say- 
ing, I have offended; return from me : that which 
thou puttest on me Avill I bear ;" that is, the tribute 
thou exactest I will pay. "And the king of Assyria 
appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah, three hun- 
dred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold ;" 
that is, he levied this amount from liim after lie had 
submitted to his supremacy. "And Hezekiah gave 
him all the silver that was found in tlie house of the 
Lord, and in the treasures of the king's house. At 
that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from tlie 



264 FURTHER MONUMENTAL 

doors of the temi^Ie of the Lord, and from the pillars 
which Hezekiah, king of Judah, had overlaid, and 
gave it to the king of Assyria." 

When Hezekiah submitted to the king of Assyria, 
and consented to give whatever tribute the king of 
Assyria would exact from him, he gave him, first, 
three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of 
gold ; but we read, also, that he gave him, in addi- 
tion to this, "all the silver that was found in the 
house of the Lord." He gave first, thirty talents of 
gold — that is specified; but in addition to the three 
hundred talents of silver, he gave him an immense 
quantity of silver found in the house of the Lord. 

Let us now read the following record inscribed 
upon one of the monuments. The Xinevite inscrip- 
tion has been strictly and exactly deciphered by Sir 
Henry Rawlinson ; and here it is, not, mark you, 
written by a Christian, nor by a Jew ; but written 
by a heathen upward of 2,500 years ago, and 
therefore of unquestionable authenticity, and of great 
value. Here is the hieroglyphic inscription. " Be- 
cause Hezekiah, king of Judah, did not submit to 
my yoke, forty of his strong fenced cities, and in- 
numerable smaller towns which depended upon them, 
I took and plundered ; but I left to Hezekiah, Jeru- 
salem, his capital city, and some of the smaller towns 
around it. Because Hezekiah still refused to pay 
me homage I attacked him, and carried ofi* the 
whole population which dwelt around Jerusalem, 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 265 

with thirty talents of gold, and . eight hundred 
talents of silver — the accumulated wealth of the 
nobles of Hezekiah's court; and of their daughters 
and of the officers of his palace, men-slaves and 
women-slaves, I carried to Nineveh ; and I account- 
ed in the spoil my tribute which he refused to 
pay me." 

Now, just notice the striking coincidence. First 
of all, the historic facts as engraved on the monu- 
ments, are almost the translation into other words 
of the Scripture record in the Second Book of Kings. 
But you notice, in the Second Book of Kings, it 
reads — "thirty talents of gold and three hundred 
talents of silver," while it is also stated, that other 
silver was added. And, accordingly, we find the 
king, Sennacherib, giving the account of the sum 
total of the whole to be eight hundred talents of 
silver ; that is, the three hundred talents paid, and 
the additional silver which Hezekiah says he paid 
him from the house of the Lord ; an undesigned coin- 
cidence that most clearly proves the authenticity of 
the fact, and shows again the very stones crying 
out from Babylon, from Nineveh, from Egypt — 
Moses is right, and his writing historical. 

There is every reason to believe that the Birs Nim- 
roud, the remains of which you may see engraved 
in any ordinary book of Scripture antiquity, was the 
temple of Belus, and the tower of ancient Babel. 

Mr. Buckingham describes it as " a pyramid of 
12 



266 FUBTHER MONUMENTAL 

eight separate stages, rising and retreating within 
each other." 

Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, whose ve- 
racity is generally admitted, states, that the temple 
of Belus was the tower of Babel. 

Mr. Rich, alluding to its ruins, says, "As seen at 
present, it is cloven by a deep furrow ; the other 
parts, to the summit of the pyramid, are occupied by 
immense fragments of brickwork, tumbled together, 
and converted into solid vitrified masses ; as if it 
had undergone the action of the fiercest fire, or as 
if it had been blown up by gimpowder." 

Sir Robert Ker Porter says, "In this pyramid, 
we see the very tower of Babel, the stupendous 
monument executed by Nimroud upon the plains of 
Shinar." 

Now, you will remember, when men began to build 
that tower, about the identity of which I have no 
doubt, they were of one language, and they meant it 
to be a monument of impious unbelief. God had said. 
As long as you see that beautiful bow span the blue 
firmament, or spread itself upon the black thunder- 
cloud, so long there shall not be another flood. 

Here I state what will be set down by some of the 
newspapers as perfect fanaticism ; but, if it be fanati- 
cism, it is my faith. I am just as certain that another 
flood will not overwhelm the earth a« I am certain of 
the existence of God Almighty himself. And the 
ground of my belief is, that God said, I will put my 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 267 

bow in the clouds, and as long as you see that bow so 
long be assured there will not be another universal 
flood. Now, if that be fanaticism in the estimate of 
some, it is sober scriptural faith in the judgment of 
God. The natives of the plain of Shinar disbelieved 
the pledge in the bow : they repudiated the sacramental 
sign ; they thought they would lay down a means of 
safety far better than God's Word ; they built this gi- 
gantic tower ; so that they said, if the water should 
rise as high as Ararat, 17,000 feet, we will build a 
tower higher than Ararat, so that the water shall never 
be able to reach us. It was mere physical force and 
skill pitted against the Word of God. God was so 
grieved at this want of confidence in His Word, and 
this attempt to supersede it, that it is said He looked 
down ; and their speech was cloven, and broken into 
dialects. And the word " looking down " often means 
in Scripture, nay, generally means in Scripture, visiting 
with judgments ; and the probability is that the light- 
nings of heaven tore the fabric into fragments, and that 
the vitrified brick and the rent ruins are the standing 
traces of the righteous judgments of God. Of this 
there is evidence, apart altogether from Scripture. To 
this historic fact Dr. Wiseman refers. It is a strange 
thing to be constrained to quote a Roman Catholic 
Bishop against a Protestant Bishop; but in this in- 
stance the Roman Catholic Bishop is the better of the 
two. Dr. Wiseman states that all ethnologists have 
come to this conclusion, that all languages indicate a 



268 FURTHER MONUMENTAL 

common source; but also indicate in their historical 
transmission a fracture or dislocation. These are the 
philosophical words in which he conveys what is the 
judgment of ethnologists. And the most recent writer 
upon languages, Max Muller, a professor in the Uni- 
versity of Oxford, says, at the conclusion of his most 
interesting and able work, " The science of language 
thus leads us up to that highest summit from which we 
see into the very dawn of man's life on earth, and when 
and where those words which we have heard so often 
from the days of our childhood, ' And the whole earth 
was of one language and one speech,' assume a mean- 
ing more natural, more intelligible, and more convincing 
than we ever marked before." The highest science 
supplies the strongest evidence of the truth of the 
Word of God. A very able writer, speaking upon 
this subject, says, referring to these opponents of the 
Bible, "Had Voltaire been now alive he would not 
have ventured to put the sneering question, how and 
out of what materials the Hebrew lawgiver could write 
the Pentateuch ;" a question, by the by, that the Bishop 
of Xatal borrows from him ; " for," says this writer, 
" it is proved that the papyrus was in common use for 
writing in his day ; nor would he have tauntingly asked 
how, after an interval of a thousand years, Hilkiah 
could find in the temple of Jerusalem the autograph 
of the law ; for writings and contracts on papyrus as 
old as the days of Pharaoh still exist, and are still legi- 
ble. Nor would he have insinuated aorainst Ezra the 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 2G9 

charge of having forged the Sacred Books." Voltaire 
is not half so bad as the Bishop of Natal in this re- 
spect ; because the Bishop of Natal says, it was Samuel 
that wrote the Pentateuch, and that he collected a lot 
of floating traditions and fables, and pieced them to- 
gether. Voltaire did not go so far as that. We know 
that Ezra did collect and arrange the Sacred Books, 
and probably added here and there, what we can de- 
tect, the modern name of an ancient city. Ezra, how- 
ever, was an inspired man. Voltaire admitted that 
Ezra did so ; but he says that Ezra forged the books, 
which is a very different thing. '' Nor would he have 
insinuated against Ezra the charge of having forged 
the Sacred Books which he collected ; for the written 
and monumental history of Egypt so coincides with 
these books in dates and facts as to show that they 
were not the work of imposture." And Benjamin 
Constant, an eminent French writer, well says : " He 
who would be gay with Voltaire, at the expense of 
Ezekiel and Genesis, must unite two things, which will 
make his gayety sufficiently melancholy ; ignorance the 
most profound, and frivolity the most deplorable." 

And let me give, in drawing these remarks to a close, 
a most impressive extract from a sermon preached by 
one, with whose ecclesiastical sentiments in many re- 
spects I do not agree — for High Churchism, I think, 
has just its reaction in Rationalism — I mean the pres- 
ent eloquent Bishop of Oxford. He says, in one of his 
sermons, most eloquently and impressively, " I can tell 



270 FURTHER MONUMENTAL 

you of an overshadowing grave which closed in on such 
a struggle and such an end" — the doubter's end he is 
speaking of— " as that at which I have glanced. In it 
was laid a form that had hardly reached the fullness of 
earliest manhood. That young man had gone, young, 
ardent, and simply faithful, into the tutelage of one, 
himself I doubt not, a sincere believer, but who sought 
to reconcile the teachings of the Protestant Church, in 
which he ministered, Avith the dreams of Rationalism. 
His favorite pupil learnt his lore, and it sufficed for his 
needs while health beat high in his youthful veins. But 
on him sickness and decay closed early in ; and as the 
glow of health failed, the intellectual lights for which 
he had exchanged the simplicity of faith began to pale ; 
whilst the viper brood of doubts which almost unaw^ares 
he had let slip into his soul, crept forth from their hid- 
ing-23laces, and raised against him fearfully their en- 
venomed heads. They were too strong for him ; the 
teacher who had suggested the doubts could not re- 
move them, and in darkness and despair his victim died 
before his eyes — the doubter." 

Meanwhile, let us rejoice that the stone calls out 
from the walls, " Thy word, O God, is truth." The 
dead mummy wakes from its long and its heavy sleep ; 
rises from its wooden coffin; holds the imperishable 
papyrus in its hand, and on that hand the eye of the 
nineteenth century reads, "Moses and the prophets 
spake truth." The sarcophagi of the ancient Egyptian 
kings are penetrated; the lamp of the everlasting gos- 



WITNESSES TO MOSES. 271 

pel lets its light shine upon them, and we discover the 
solemn and sublime shadows of Moses, Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob. Shadows visible in the nineteenth century 
projected from the originals who lived 3,000 years be- 
fore. Coins dug from the depths of the Euphrates say, 
" God's word is truth." Thirty centuries emerge from 
the shadows of the past, each century with its testi- 
mony in,its hand, and that testimony is that the words 
of Moses are words of history and of fact. The Pha- 
raohs in their pyramidal chambers seem to hear the 
sound or to feel the breath of the resurrection trumpet, 
and they, too, are now coming forth at the bidding of 
God, and each Pharaoh — most unexpected use — the 
very Pharaoh that persecuted Israel, and would not 
let Israel go ; the very Pharaoh that lost his first-born 
amidst the judgments upon Egypt when the Exodus 
took place ; all step forth from their cold, damp, pyra- 
midal chambers, and each holds his testimony in his 
hand, and each declares, what we feel, and in our 
hearts we cherish, how transient is all that man thinks 
great ; how lasting, how real, how true, is the shortest 
word that God has inspired in the Sacred Volume. 



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